Jay Hong (2024)

Jay Hong (홍재열 Hong Jae Yeol) is a supporting character in Lookism. He is a student in the fashion department at Jae Won High School.

Dino Lee plays Jay in the Lookism Chinese drama.

Appearance[]

Jay is somewhat taller than average, muscular, and has a fair complexion. His dyed long blonde bangs cover his eyes in all circ*mstances even when he faces strong wind, when he's turned upside down, to the point they never were shown since the beginning of the series. He is always dressed fashionably in high-end brand clothing and wears a variety of Chrome Heart rings on his fingers. He rides a motorcycle to school and carries a custom finger-print bag with him that contains a gun.

Personality[]

Jay is an extremely quiet person who is shown to never speak, making it impossible for other characters, except his relatives and Daniel Park, to understand him. He is shown to be a strong fighter trained in Systema and Kali Arnis although he doesn't engage in fights without reason.

He is very notably drawn towards Daniel, and is shown to be strongly romantically attracted to him, to the point where his whole world rotates around his presence: Daniel is the only person that makes Jay exit his bubble to the point that almost all the interactions Jay has are with Daniel. He is shown to be morose whenever Daniel disappears in the story and is ready to help Daniel at any time with whatever he would need, ask, etc. This is most likely the result of an unrequited love he feels towards Daniel.^[3]

Apart from that, he is very generous, kind and observant, to Daniel particularly, as well as some other people.

History[]

Although not many elements of Jay's history were revealed, he is the son of billionaire Steve Hong, which makes him the younger brother of Kitae Hong and the older brother of Joy Hong. However, his relationship with his family isn't great: throughout the series, he is shown to be kept away from family events, being asked by his father to never call him again (after Steve Hong became aware that Jay was involved in a street fight), etc. The only family member he seems to have a good relationship with is Joy, who is often shown hanging out with him.

We also know that until Daniel's arrival at J High School, Jay was a very isolated student that never interacted with anybody, nor seemed interested in doing so. Since then, Jay opened up a lot, mostly to Daniel, who he seems to love more than anybody else, but also to a few other persons (Vasco, Zack Lee, etc).

In the more recent chapters, hoping to find Daniel (whose second body was kidnapped by Workers), Jay went back to Sophia, his father's bodyguard, to complete his training, which he dropped out of priorly due to the harshness of the training. He then joined the Allied crew, for the same reason.

Fighting Prowess[]

While having not actively participated in a breadth of fights, Jay has proven to be a very proficient and deadly martial artist. Jay is versed in 2 different martial arts: Systema and Arnis. Systema is a Russian martial art taught by and to special forces for the express purpose of killing or disabling enemies as quickly and efficiently as possible. In fact, Jay often has to put a motorcycle helmet on his opponents to make sure he can't kill them. Arnis being a Filipino martial art with a great emphasis on using weapons such as tonfas, staves, and karambits along with a supplementary education in unarmed combat. With this martial art, Jay often demonstrates his skills utilising BB guns^[4] but has also attacked utilising burning steel pipes showing an ability to work with ad-hoc and makeshift weapons. Using these two martial arts in combination he was able to overwhelm Scott Kwon, Dominic Min, and Jihan Kwak, more recently and after completing his training with Sophia Alexander.

Aside from that, Jay has demonstrated a strong tenacity and physicality. This is exhibited with him having endured burning his own hands to fight utilizing steel pipes and struggling against Logan Lee's submissions despite Logan's physical strength and endurance. He has shown himself to be very quick when it comes to hand speed, striking an uncountable number of times when having taken hold of his opponent with James Gong noting that in 1 flurry that Jay could have "killed him 7 times" and being fast enough to counter Logan's natural durability causing him actually to feel pain through his layer of fat.

Trivia[]

• Jay is modeled after Aboki model Hong Jay.
• He has a fear of bugs.^[5] He also had a fear of dogs^[6], but he overcame it.^[7]
• When he takes a picture, he usually makes a scared expression.^[8][9]
• The penname of his Paprika TV account is 'asdf'. In Chapter 29, he used his account to compete with Lala on who could give the most balloons to the stream of Duke and Daniel.
• Jay dreams to be a doctor because of Daniel (who was hospitalised at some point in the series). ^[10]
• Jay used to smoke but quit in Ep. 38 when a passing student told him that he won't get a lover if he does.
• He is academically strong, and was the number one student in his class until Daniel Park surpassed him during the Midterms arc. He is shown to have a stack of study textbooks and papers on his desk while everyone else in his class messed around.

References[]