Actor Lee Ju-seung won the grand prize at the '1st K Short Drama Awards', co-hosted by Cineplay and the Korean Film Archive on the 29th of last month, for '살인자, 윗집그녀', which he directed. The work beat more than 200 entries; it was made on ENA's director survival program 'Directors Arena', aired from May to July, where it won the final. It consists of 54 episodes of just over two minutes each, totaling 96 minutes. In an interview with JoongAng Ilbo, Lee said, “First, I thought of it as a film. I just cut it into pieces of about a minute and a half.” He added, “In the early part I put in 'hooks' to make viewers curious about the next episode, but there's nothing special about it being a short drama. In the end, I think the story is what matters.” The series follows a slumping thriller novelist (Lee Ju-seung) whose new upstairs neighbor is a killer (Yoon So-yi). Because of the thin floors, he can vividly hear the killings upstairs, and a strange interaction develops between the writer, who tries to turn them into a novel, and the killer before a twist arrives. Lee explained that the idea came from severe noise in a house he used to live in. On the work's message, he said a high school friend who took his own life had left traces of reading, the day before, a news article that described the method in detail. “I came to think that when artists or the media deal with death, they should consider the effect that content could have on someone, and I put that into the script,” he said. Lee, who has dreamed of directing since high school, has released the short films 'Hyeolan' (2020) and 'Dotdae' (2021). He said he donated the program's 100 million won prize money while thinking of his grandfather, who passed away earlier this year.