Alchemy of Souls ran for 30 episodes on tvN, split into two parts across 2022 and 2023. It was created by Hong Jeong-eun, Hong Mi-ran and Park Joon-hwa, and it stars Lee Jae-wook as Jang Uk, a young man from a prestigious family who wants his fate rewritten, and Go Youn-jung as Naksu, a powerful sorceress in a blind woman’s body.
The series first aired June 18, 2022, and ended January 8, 2023. It is also available for streaming on TVING and Netflix in selected regions. Its listed genres are Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Action & Adventure, and Mystery.
Trailer, via Netflix K-Content.
Two Parts, Thirty Episodes
Part 1 aired from June 18 to August 28, 2022, for 20 episodes. Part 2, titled Alchemy of Souls: Light and Shadow, aired from December 10, 2022, to January 8, 2023, for 10 episodes. The whole series aired on tvN every Saturday and Sunday at 21:10 KST.
That is the shape of the thing. Twenty episodes, then a break, then ten more with a different actress playing the female lead.
Lee Jae-wook, Go Youn-jung and the Cast
Lee Jae-wook plays Jang Uk. Go Youn-jung plays Naksu, Cho-young and Jin Bu-yeon — three names carried by one performer.
Minhyun plays Seo Yul, with Moon Seong-hyun as the teen version. Shin Seung-ho plays Crown Prince Go Won. Yu Jun-sang is Park Jin. Oh Na-ra is Maid Kim Do-ju. Yoo In-soo is Park Dang-gu. ARIN is Jin Cho-yeon. Jo Jae-yun is Jin Mu. Do Sang-woo is Seo Yun-o. Park Eun-hye is Jin Ho-gyeong.
A powerful sorceress in a blind woman’s body encounters a man from a prestigious family, who wants her help to change his destiny.
The Female Lead Changed Three Times
The female lead role went through three names before the show aired.
In January 2021, Park Hye-su’s agency revealed that the actress auditioned for Alchemy of Souls. Separately, in June, it was announced that actor Joo Sang-wook was offered a role in the series.
The female lead role was first confirmed to be played by Park Hye-eun. In July 2021, she decided to leave the series after a mutual agreement with the production team. It was stated that although Park is a rookie actress, she prepared hard for the series, but felt a lot of pressure about playing the main character of a big project.
The role was then offered to actress Jung So-min. Jung and director Park Joon-hwa previously worked together in the 2017 TV series Because This Is My First Life.
tvN officially announced the lead lineup consisting of Lee Jae-wook, Jung So-min, Hwang Min-hyun, Shin Seung-ho, Yoo Jun-sang, Oh Na-ra and Jo Jae-yoon on March 3, 2022. On March 21, Yoo In-soo, ARIN, Park Eun-hye, Lee Do-kyung and Im Chul-soo were announced to have joined the cast.
After the end of Part 1 in August 2022, the female lead actress Jung So-min was replaced by Go Youn-jung for Part 2. Go had previously portrayed the original identity for Jung’s character in a cameo in Part 1.
What the Record Actually Shows
The casting history is the most concrete thing in the file, and it is worth reading slowly. A rookie actress left a lead role before cameras rolled. A replacement came in and shot 20 episodes. Then a third actress took over the same character for the final 10.
The source states the replacement and the cameo. It does not say what the production intended by either, and it does not describe how the change played on screen. That part is not known.
The Score
Alchemy of Souls has a published critical score of 8.6 out of 10.
That figure is the TMDB audience score, drawn from 818 votes. The source gives the number and the vote count. It does not say who cast those votes or how they were sampled, so the 8.6 should be read as what it is: an audience score from a self-selecting group on one platform, not a measured verdict on the series.
That distinction matters more than the number itself. An 8.6 from 818 votes is a real signal of affection, but it is a small sample against a 30-episode show that aired in two chunks eight months apart.
Where the Show Sits
Alchemy of Souls is a South Korean television series written by the Hong sisters, and it depicts the stories of young mages dealing with heaven and earth. That is the source’s own description of the premise, and it is broad enough to cover a lot of ground.
The show is tagged across four genres at once — Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Action & Adventure, and Mystery. That is a wide net, and it tells you the series was built to pull in viewers who do not normally watch the same things.
The Recasting Is the Story Here
Strip away the genre tags and the audience score and what remains is a production that changed its female lead twice before a single episode aired, then changed her again between its two halves.
That is rare, and it is the detail a reader should carry away. The show’s own marketing put Lee Jae-wook, Jung So-min, Hwang Min-hyun, Shin Seung-ho, Yoo Jun-sang, Oh Na-ra and Jo Jae-yoon at the front in March 2022. By the time Part 2 arrived that December, one of those seven names had been swapped out and a new one — Go Youn-jung — had taken her place.
The cameo is what makes the handoff legible. Go had already appeared in Part 1 as the original identity of Jung’s character, which gave the second part a face the audience had seen before. Whether that was planned or a convenience is not something the source establishes.
What Is Not Known
The source does not say why Jung So-min left the role, and this article will not guess. It does not describe the production’s reasoning, the cast’s reaction, or how viewers responded to the change at the time.
What it does give is a clean timeline: an audition in January 2021, an unrelated casting offer in June, a first confirmation for Park Hye-eun, her exit that July, Jung So-min’s arrival, the March 2022 lineup announcement, the March 21 additions, and the Part 2 replacement by Go Youn-jung.
Those dates hold. The 8.6 from 818 votes holds. The 30 episodes across two parts hold. Everything else about how the show landed with its audience is outside what this file can support, and the honest move is to leave it there.
The recasting is the part worth watching. A lead role that changed hands three times before the finale is not a footnote to the series — for anyone tracking how this show was actually made, it is the main event.
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