Singer-turned-actor Lee Jung-hyun said her new thriller “Limit,” directed by Lee Seung-joon, is similar to “Taken,” the hit Hollywood film about a former spy who goes to great lengths to find his kidnapped teenage daughter. But unlike “Taken,” the action film features a mother and a female villain as the main characters.

“We hoped to create a Korean version of ‘Taken’” that features a mother as the main character, Lee said during a press conference at CGV Yongsan in Seoul on Thursday.

In the new film, police officer So-eun (Lee) takes part in an investigation into a child kidnapping case. While negotiating with the kidnapper, she acts as the stand-in for the kidnapped child‘s mother (Jin Seo-yeon). However, the kidnapper seems to know that So-eun is a police officer. So-eun soon finds that her son has been kidnapped as well.

Lee said she performed most of the action scenes without a stunt double.

“I am sure many actors have a similar experience. When I was performing action scenes, I did not even notice that I was getting hurt,” she said.

Working with veteran actors, director Lee Seung-joon said he did not conduct many rehearsals before shooting the action scenes.

“For many scenes, we did not rehearse at all because I thought that sometimes the first take can capture more realistic emotions of the characters,” the director said.

Moon Jeong-hee, who played the kidnapper, explained that she tried to understand her character in order to perform the reckless criminal.

“Playing a female villain, I wanted to make sure that I show the same energy that male villains show in other movies,” she said. ”My character is very protective of her brother who is sick. Of course, the things that she did was horrible and shouldn’t have been done, but I had to somewhat justify her actions to play this villain character.”

At the end of the movie, director Lee Seung-joon said he added photos of actual missing children in Korea to raise awareness.

“I hope that parents of the missing children can have some hope from watching So-eun, so I asked for the parents’ permission and added those photos,” the director said.

Toward the end of the conference, actor Lee added that she could understand her character So-eun better now that she became a mother this year.

“As a mother, if something like that happened to me, I think I would have gone crazy. I can relate to my character even more now for sure,” she said. “It is heartbreaking to watch it and I think all mothers will feel the same way when they watch this movie.”

“Limit” will hit local theaters on Wednesday.