Ryu Jun Yeol Faces His Double in Netflix Thriller Mousetrap

Ryu Jun Yeol will confront an impostor with his own face in Netflix’s upcoming Korean thriller Mousetrap. New images from the series show the actor as reclusive novelist Moon Jae and as the mysterious figure known as The Rat, setting up a struggle over identity, money and the evidence that allows a person to exist in modern society.

The series follows Moon Jae after The Rat takes his name, identity and fortune. With his outward appearance duplicated and the records of his life no longer working in his favor, the novelist must prove that he is the original. The conflict turns a familiar fear of identity theft into a physical confrontation between two apparently identical men.

Two other characters are drawn into the case. Sul Kyung Gu plays Noja, a loan shark searching for missing money, while Lee Kyu Hyung portrays detective Sun Yong, whose investigation leads him toward the truth about The Rat. Their competing goals expand the story beyond a private battle and place Moon Jae’s claim under criminal and institutional pressure.

An Old Folktale Reframed as a Modern Thriller

The drama is based on a webtoon and takes inspiration from the Korean folktale The Field Mouse That Ate a Fingernail. In the story, a mouse consumes a person’s discarded fingernail, assumes that person’s form and takes over his life. The premise gives an ordinary object an unsettling role: something casually clipped away becomes the means by which another being can claim an entire existence.

That connection appears directly in the newly released stills, including an image of Moon Jae cutting his nails. The gesture is mundane, but its meaning changes once the audience understands the tale behind it. The image suggests that the danger may begin without a dramatic breach, through a trace of the self left unguarded in everyday life.

Other stills place Moon Jae and The Rat on opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence. Their faces match, but their expressions and presence distinguish them. The visual contrast gives Ryu Jun Yeol a dual challenge: he must make two identical appearances readable as separate people before the story provides official proof of which identity belongs to whom.

Who Decides Whether a Person Is Real?

Ryu Jun Yeol connected the premise to a society in which people are often defined by a small set of visible and administrative markers. A face, an identification card and possessions can all serve as proof, yet the series asks what remains when those markers are copied or reassigned. Moon Jae’s isolation makes that question more dangerous because fewer personal relationships may be available to confirm his history.

Sul Kyung Gu highlighted the vulnerability of someone who can no longer be authenticated by formal systems. His perspective points to a chilling gap between lived identity and recognized identity: a person may know exactly who they are while institutions respond only to documents, accounts and appearances. Once those signals favor the impostor, truth alone may not restore the victim’s place.

Lee Kyu Hyung focused on the amount of personal information now circulating in daily life. The series turns that concern into a worst-case scenario in which access to data is not used merely to steal money but to occupy a person’s social position. Detective Sun Yong therefore faces more than the task of locating a criminal; he must determine which version of an apparently identical man the system should believe.

Director Kim Hong Sun has framed the concept as an intensified version of risks that already exist. The growth of single-person households adds another layer to the premise, since someone living alone may have fewer witnesses to daily routines and personal history. In that setting, the theft of identity can also become the theft of social connection.

A Three-Way Pursuit Begins August 28

The series combines Moon Jae’s fight for his life with Noja’s search for money and Sun Yong’s investigation. Those three paths create different tests of The Rat’s deception: the victim knows the personal truth, the lender follows financial consequences and the detective looks for evidence that can withstand official scrutiny.

The dual role places Ryu Jun Yeol at the center of both the mystery and its visual design. The fence imagery makes the conflict immediately legible, but the larger tension depends on whether behavior, memory and relationships can outweigh a perfect face. Each encounter between Moon Jae and his double can therefore challenge both the supporting characters and the viewer to decide what counts as proof.

Mousetrap will premiere on Netflix on August 28. By combining a folktale about a stolen life with contemporary anxieties about personal data and authentication, the thriller gives an old warning a modern mechanism. Its central question is simple but destabilizing: if every recognized sign of a person’s identity belongs to someone else, how can the original reclaim it?