Lee Dong-wook's 'A Shop for Killers' Spinoff Opens Soft at 1.7% Rating

MBC's new action drama A Shop for Killers Season 1 opened to a 1.7% rating for its first episode, a soft start for one of the network's featured series of the season.

The show is based on Kang Ji-young's novel A Shop for Killers. It follows Jung Ji-an, played by Kim Hye-jun, a young woman who becomes the target of professional killers after inheriting a suspicious online shopping mall from her uncle, Jung Jin-man, played by Lee Dong-wook.

In the premiere, Jin-man's sudden death leaves Ji-an on her own. She stumbles onto the strange shopping mall he left behind, and her ordinary life begins to unravel almost overnight. The 1.7% rating marks a sharp drop from the 5.0% finale of MBC's previous drama in the slot, Fifties Professionals (Osipeuro), falling 3.3 percentage points. In the same time slot, SBS aired Kim Bujang, starring So Ji-sub, which posted 18.8%.

Episode two, airing Friday, pushes the threat closer. Questions about the true nature of the shopping mall grow, and Ji-an starts running into traces of a past she never knew her uncle had, along with the world he was tied to. There is barely time for her to catch up. In a fog where she cannot tell allies from enemies, Ji-an faces her first real test just to stay alive.

Ji-an's old classmate Bae Jung-min, played by Park Ji-bin, adds another layer of tension. Jung-min ends up tracing the shopping mall's secrets alongside her, taking on the role of the character who helps pull the clues together. Still, with the motives of nearly everyone circling Ji-an in doubt after Jin-man's death, she has to lean on someone while questioning every choice she makes.