Na Young Suk’s Just Friends Pairs Six Stars for a Friendship Trip

Six entertainers will turn decades of shared history into a group journey on tvN’s upcoming variety show Just Friends, a working English title. Lee Seo Jin and Han Ji Min, Kim Yong Gun and Park Jung Soo, and MONSTA X’s Joohoney and TWICE’s Jeongyeon will travel as three pairs of longtime male and female friends.

The program is built around relationships that existed long before filming began. At their destination, the cast members will spend time freely while sharing candid conversations and stories shaped by years of familiarity. Producing directors Na Young Suk and Shin Gun Joon will lead the show, which is scheduled to premiere in the fourth quarter of 2026.

Nearly 20 years of playful exchanges

Lee Seo Jin and Han Ji Min first met as cast members of the 2007 historical drama Lee San, Wind of the Palace. Their friendship has continued for nearly 20 years, giving their pairing a shared professional beginning as well as a long personal history that the travel format can explore.

Their dynamic is defined by teasing. Lee Seo Jin has often joked with Han Ji Min, but she has recently begun delivering what is described as her own “little revenge.” The shift creates an easy comic structure for the trip: an established pattern remains recognizable, while Han Ji Min now has more opportunities to turn the jokes back on him.

Because their rapport was formed over many years, the pair will not need the artificial introduction common to casts meeting for the first time. The central interest instead lies in how familiar habits appear when two friends leave their regular routines and spend extended time together at a destination chosen for the program.

A friendship spanning 55 years

Veteran actors Kim Yong Gun and Park Jung Soo bring the longest relationship to the cast. They first met in 1972 and have remained friends for 55 years, regularly staying in contact and relying on one another throughout that time.

Their comfort allows them to exchange blunt remarks without taking offense. That freedom is expected to produce humor, but it also reveals the trust underneath the jokes. A friendship lasting more than half a century gives the show a chance to hear memories from different stages of two careers and two lives without turning the conversations into formal interviews.

The pairing also broadens the program’s view of friendship. Just Friends is not limited to one generation or one kind of entertainment career. By placing a 55-year bond beside relationships of 20 and 10 years, it can show how familiarity, communication, and humor change over time while still remaining recognizable.

Joohoney and Jeongyeon test an easy bond on camera

Joohoney and Jeongyeon represent the K-pop side of the lineup. Both debuted in 2015, and their friendship has now reached the 10-year mark. Even after a long period without meeting, reconnecting feels natural to them, a sign of how little explanation their relationship requires in private.

Filming alone together creates a different reaction. The two have acknowledged that facing cameras as a pair feels unexpectedly awkward. That contrast—complete ease as friends but new self-consciousness as onscreen travel partners—may reveal a side of their connection that has rarely been visible.

Their inclusion also places two active idol careers inside a format driven by conversation rather than performance. Viewers will see MONSTA X’s Joohoney and TWICE’s Jeongyeon not as members of separate stage teams, but as friends negotiating the unusual experience of making an existing bond part of a television program.

A travel show powered by history

Just Friends has a simple structure, but the casting gives each pair a different emotional rhythm. Lee Seo Jin and Han Ji Min bring playful retaliation, Kim Yong Gun and Park Jung Soo offer unfiltered trust built over 55 years, and Joohoney and Jeongyeon combine private comfort with public awkwardness.

The shared trip will connect those three dynamics while leaving room for spontaneous time at the destination. Rather than asking strangers to manufacture chemistry, the show begins with relationships that have already endured. Its question is how those friendships will look when travel, cameras, and the presence of two other pairs place them in a new setting.

With Na Young Suk and Shin Gun Joon directing, the fourth-quarter premiere will introduce a cast linked not by a new competition or fictional role, but by the histories they already share. Just Friends is positioning those histories as the main event, turning familiar teasing, blunt honesty, and momentary awkwardness into the material of the journey.