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You're reading Off Script — cultural notes about Korean dramas that dig deeper than subtitles.
Today we're unpacking how Mantis protagonist Han-ul describes Benjamin—Choi Hyun-wook's character—in just three lines of dialogue.
All three are slang.
Let's dive in 🤿
Table of Contents
Benjamin's character
I watched Mantis recently expecting Choi Hyun-wook as an assassin.
The Kill Boksoon spinoff gave us a tech bro CEO instead.
The character was straightforward: rude, sociopathic, dressed in flashy clothes like a kid playing dress-up, eating sweets.
Benjamin's limited screen time and one-dimensional arc didn't warrant a full character analysis video, so I'm covering it here instead.
(Hyun-wook is still building his filmography, and I'm excited to see him land even better roles down the line!)
Benjamin's character is perfectly explained by how Han-ul—Mantis's protagonist—describes him with barely disguised contempt.
Three phrases. All slang. Let's examine them.
Three Slang Descriptions That Define Benjamin
1. "양스러운 사업가 새끼" (yang-seureo-un saeopga sae-kki)
English subtitle: "douchey businessman"
Even as a native Korean speaker, I'd never heard "양스럽다" (yang-seureopda) before.
But seeing "douchey businessman" in the subtitle helped me deduce what it meant from context 😂
The closest equivalent:
Someone who's slick in the worst way.
Superficially polished but fundamentally untrustworthy.
The sheen of success without substance.
From this first line, Han-ul reveals his disgust—and we can already sense Benjamin's fate is somewhat sealed 😉
2. "딱 봐도 쎄한 애" (ttak bwado sse-han ae)
English subtitle: "He looked sketchy as hell"
"쎄하다" (sse-hada) means sketchy, suspicious, off.
To break it down further:
"딱 봐도" (ttak bwado) means "just by looking"—a snap judgment your nervous system makes before your brain catches up.
It's the feeling you get when someone's smile doesn't quite reach their eyes.
Han-ul and Benjamin are fundamentally incompatible—their chemistry is nonexistent.
All images © Netflix. Used minimally for educational purposes only
3. "호기심 많은 철부지 / 개초딩 같은 새끼" (hogisim maneun cheolbuji / gae-choding gateun sae-kki)
English subtitle: "He's just an immature kid interested in this line of work" / "That immature idiot's curiosity is to blame"
Personally, this is the line that made me laugh the hardest 😂
Han-ul can't stand this rich young businessman trying to insert himself into the professionals' work.
Let's break down what Han-ul actually said:
호기심 많은 (hogisim maneun) = "full of curiosity"
철부지 (cheolbuji) = "someone who hasn't mentally matured despite their age"
개 (gae) = intensifier meaning "extremely" or "fucking"
초딩 (choding) = "elementary schooler" used as an insult—pure slang deployed when you want to say someone operates at an embarrassingly low level
새끼 (sae-kki) = "bastard" or "punk"
The subtitle boiled this down to "immature kid."
But Han-ul wasn't simply calling Benjamin immature—he despised him from the very start, as if Benjamin's fate was already written.
The mockery is baked into every syllable.
The contempt is architectural.
Your Turn
Did you catch Mantis?
If you enjoyed Kill Boksoon, this spinoff is a light watch—perfect with a beer on a Friday night to chill.
One of my YouTube subscribers—Asuka, who leaves comments that read like poetry—once said this about actor Choi Hyun-wook:
Actor & Abbot
“They want Hyun-wook to showcase his full range, but where his personal life is concerned, they want him to limit himself to absolute purity.
Any kind of male itch he gets is to be purged with ascetic self-discipline.
So they want both Actor Hyun-wook and Abbot Hyun-wook.”
We're delighted to watch this promising rising star's career unfold—he's still in his early twenties.
Pictional Arc
Asuka and I started discussing whether the canoe trio (Suho/Si-eun/Beom-seok) could realistically maintain their friendship as adults post-coma.
That conversation evolved into a mid-length fictional arc series (haha).
In reality, different social classes make it unlikely they'd cross paths again, but in our fictional deluluverse, working-class Mr. Ahn visits Dr. Yeon's clinic without an appointment 😂
Our arc isn't just fiction—it includes deep character analysis and philosophical themes we couldn't fit into YouTube videos.
Come check it out if you're interested.
Started as a joke between Asuka and me, but it's grown into deep Weak Hero character analysis plus post-coma speculation.
I'm the bricklayer adding local flavor while Asuka simmers the fictional arc soup.
The blog's getting renovated for easier reading—stay tuned.
Continue reading, 🔗 click here
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