Jung Jae-ha is a drama scriptwriter who single-handedly penned the entire script for the 2026 KBS 2TV Saturday-Sunday mini-series 《The Completion of Marriage》. As a purely original script created from scratch without any pre-existing works like webtoons or web novels, this work is considered a representative debut-level work, acclaimed not for adaptation but for the writer's own narrative design capabilities.
| Item | Content |
|---|---|
| Name | Jung Jae-ha |
| Occupation | Drama Scriptwriter |
| Representative Work | 《The Completion of Marriage》(2026, KBS 2TV) |
| Genre | Crime Thriller |
| Original Work? | No — 100% Original Script |
| Broadcast Slot | KBS 2TV Saturday-Sunday Mini-series |
| Premiere Date | July 4, 2026 |
| Episodes | Total 12 Episodes |
| Directed by | Kim Jung-hyun·Kim Min-tae |
| Produced by | Red Nine Pictures·KBS Media |
《The Completion of Marriage》 is a crime thriller that begins when a wife is kidnapped just before her divorce. The protagonist, Kang Tae-joo (played by Namkoong Min), is the director of Woori Hamkke Hospital and a top authority in the field of spinal nerve microsurgery. He and his wife, Go Se-yoon (played by Lee Seol, also the chairwoman of Woori Hamkke Hospital), are a couple on the verge of collapse, having turned their backs on each other both at home and at the hospital. The day after Se-yoon is notified of divorce by Tae-joo, she leaves the chilling words, "This marriage will only be complete if one of us dies," and then disappears without a trace. This line serves as the motif for the title "The Completion of Marriage" and as a foreshadowing element that runs through the entire drama.
The kidnapper, Noh Man-hee (played by Kim Dae-myung), appears to be an ordinary 42-year-old running a computer academy, but in reality, he is a heartless criminal who approached Tae-joo as a designated driver and kidnapped Se-yoon. The intricate character relationships become even more complex with the sudden appearance of the mysterious woman Kim Kyung-ae (played by Lee Sang-hee) before Se-yoon, and Lee Soo-hyung (played by Park Byung-eun, special appearance), a former violent crimes detective who now runs a private investigation agency.
In this script, Jung Jae-ha chose a structure that begins with a melodramatic/family drama theme of "the precarious marriage life of a neurosurgeon couple," then abruptly shifts the genre to a crime thriller with the disappearance and kidnapping as a turning point. The fact that such a twist-driven structure was designed within a 12-episode series without an original work garnered attention even before its broadcast. After its release, it continued to break its own highest viewership ratings with each passing episode, rising steadily and being referred to as a dark horse in the weekend drama market.
As 《The Completion of Marriage》 is currently Jung Jae-ha's only publicly released work, it is too early to define a 'typical style' that spans multiple works. However, the narrative design methods observed within this work are distinct.
| Year | Work | Broadcaster | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | The Completion of Marriage | KBS 2TV | Script written solo, original creation, 12 episodes |
Based on publicly available domestic media and wiki sources (such as the Korean Wikipedia), Jung Jae-ha's only confirmed credit to date is 《The Completion of Marriage》. Previous broadcast works or script contest awards could not be verified with reliable data and are therefore not included on this page.
Q. Is 《The Completion of Marriage》 based on an original work? No. It is a 100% original script without any underlying original work such as a webtoon or web novel, and writer Jung Jae-ha penned it entirely from scratch.
Q. What are writer Jung Jae-ha's previous representative works? As of now, this information cannot be confirmed through publicly available data. 《The Completion of Marriage》 is the only officially verifiable credit.
Q. How many episodes does 《The Completion of Marriage》 have and where is it broadcast? It is a KBS 2TV Saturday-Sunday mini-series with a total of 12 episodes, and its first broadcast began on July 4, 2026.
Q. Who are the main characters and actors? Kang Tae-joo (Namkoong Min), Go Se-yoon (Lee Seol), Noh Man-hee (Kim Dae-myung), and Kim Kyung-ae (Lee Sang-hee) are central, with Park Byung-eun making a special appearance as former violent crimes detective Lee Soo-hyung.
Q. What is the viewership rating response? After starting at around 4% nationwide for the first episode, it continued its upward trend, reaching around 6% for the second episode and a peak of 7.3% per minute for the third episode, breaking its own highest records.
Web Verification: Facts were confirmed through the following sources.
Information excluded due to uncertainty: Writer Jung Jae-ha's birth year, origin, education, debut background, script contest award status, and previous works (including assistant writer history) — The Korean Wikipedia writer document is a stub (no information), and verifiable data could not be found through related searches, so it was not included in the filmography but stated as "unconfirmed." During the original Newsen article crawling, results mixed with other works of the same name and different actor names were confirmed once (inconsistent information such as Shim Eun-woo, Jung Yu-mi, Go Hyun-jung), so that information was entirely discarded due to failed cross-verification and not reflected in the main text.