Burger King Korea is bringing back actor Lee Jung-jae as a product advertising model for the first time in nearly nine years, tapping into nostalgia as it prepares to launch a new Quattro-branded menu item.
According to industry officials, Burger King released a teaser video on its official social media channels on Dec. 31 featuring Lee, signaling the return of the “Quattro” burger line. The video includes the phrase “Coming soon on the 8th,” alongside an image labeled “Quattro Pepper Cube Steak Whopper,” fueling expectations of an imminent product launch.
In the teaser, Lee is shown eating a burger while reading comments from past commercials, including lines such as “My forever Burger King guy” and “He was doing mukbang before mukbang was a thing.” He then delivers the line, “I’m back—with Quattro,” directly referencing his earlier association with the brand.
Burger King first partnered with Lee in 2014 for the launch of the Quattro Cheese Whopper, which featured four types of cheese. The television commercial, showing Lee in a suit silently enjoying the burger, became widely popular in South Korea and helped establish the product as a signature menu item.
The Quattro Cheese Whopper sold more than one million units within its first month and surpassed 2.5 million units within about four months, according to the company. The burger, originally developed in South Korea, was later exported to markets including the U.S., China, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, the U.K. and New Zealand.
Following the success of the campaign, Lee went on to serve as the face of several other Burger King products, including the Hash Brown Whopper, Shrimp Whopper and Red Snow Crab Whopper.
Lee Jung-jae has since become one of South Korea’s most internationally recognized actors. He gained global prominence as the lead of Netflix’s hit series Squid Game, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2022—the first Asian actor to do so. More recently, he appeared in Disney+’s Star Wars series The Acolyte, further solidifying his status as a global entertainment figure.
