The Full Cast of Netflix’s ‘Black Knight’

The latest Korean drama to hit Netflix, Black Knight, is already garnering a lot of attention. The series paints a dystopian world where your everyday delivery driver is now a combat-trained runway model (quite literally in this case), and instead of bringing you your oranges, milk, and Reese’s peanut butter cups, he is bringing you the oxygen you need to survive in this new hellscape. So who are the players in this series which asks the question: what if a DoorDash delivery was a little more like Mad Max?

Let’s get a little more context first of all, shall we? The year is 2071, 40 years since a comet landed on Earth, turning South Korea into a desert and polluting the air to such an extent that it is almost impossible to survive outside. Only one percent of the population still lives, and they have been separated into factions, general, specific, and core. Of course, here we see the rich and wealthy getting their usual privileged treatment whilst the rest suffer in horrific conditions (no one is surprised by this anymore, right?).

In this dystopian world, we have those known as Black Knights, delivery men who brave the wastelands to bring the necessities for survival, including clean oxygen, to those who can afford them. They drive across the treacherous landscape, fighting off bandits and well-armed groups to make their deliveries, not something we would see most Uber drivers doing these days. One of the most legendary of the Black Knights is our protagonist, 5-8, a man who realizes he can no longer service the needs of only a few whilst the rest suffer.

So who plays 5-8, as well as all the other players in this bleak world? Let’s take a look at the cast and where you may have seen them before.

5-8: Kim Woo-bin

Kim Woo-bin plays the exceedingly handsome and deadly 5-8. Kim started his career as a runway model in South Korea at the age of 20 and started appearing on runways at Seoul Fashion Week collections. This then started the transition to acting, taking classes and training before making his first appearance in 2011 in the mystery drama White Christmas.

He started to gain recognition in 2013, appearing in two hit series and a film, and received his first award, Best New Actor at the APAN Star Awards, a South Korean awards show celebrating excellence in television and movies. Kim worked steadily until he took a hiatus after being diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer. He made a triumphant return to the screen in 2022 with the show Our Blues and now the much-talked-about Black Knight.

His role as 5-8 has the internet a-flutter as many tune in to see what it would be like to get deliveries from a walking Calvin Klein model with kick-ass martial arts skills.

Yoon Sa-wol: Kang Yoo-seok

Kang Yoo-seok plays the role of the scrappy refugee boy, Yoon Sa-Wol. Sa-wol idolizes the couriers who brave the desert to deliver vital necessities and wants to follow in the footsteps of 5-8. Luckily for him, and to the tragedy of 5-8, a spot opens up and 5-8 decides to take Sa-wol under his wing to mentor him and prepare him for the Squid Game-like competition that is undertaken to find a new delivery driver.

Kang is a little newer on the block, with his first listed performance being the 2019 series Nal Nokyeojuo. He has appeared in a handful of series since then, but it looks like this will likely be his breakout role given all the attention the show has garnered so far.