‘Gyeongseong Creature’ Park Seo-joon “I have never chosen a project by chasing popularity” [Interview]

[Sports Korea Reporter Mo Shin-jeong] “I have never done this to chase popularity. When choosing a work, I don’t think, “I need to become popular with this work.”Even when choosing ‘Gyeongseong Creature,’ I never felt pressure about being popular or not.”

Actor Park Seo-joon confessed that he did not feel much pressure regarding his decision to appear in the Netflix series ‘Gyeongseong Creature’, which is mainly set during the Japanese colonial period. Park Seo-joon recently conducted an interview with Sports Korea on the 11th at a cafe in Gahoe-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul.

He said, “A lot of people asked me if I felt any pressure about my decision to appear in this work. Since it is a work that contains historical facts, they seem to be concerned that it might be influenced by that. But isn’t it a painful and heavy history and not a shameful history? I hoped that this work would be an opportunity to inform people who don’t know about this history, and to remind those who have forgotten it. I have never done this to chase popularity. If the work is good and the character is good, they will like actor Park Seo-joon more and support him a lot. That’s why he said, “I just think I need to show better what I have to show as an actor.”

Park Seo-joon said that he did not feel much pressure in his decision to appear in ‘Gyeongseong Creature’, which was based on the Japanese colonial period and Japanese Unit 731’s biological experiments, but writer Kang Eun-kyung, who wrote the script, said in a recent interview that he and Korean Wave star Park Seo-joon Han So-hee ‘Gyeongseong Creature’ He revealed that he was greatly encouraged by his willingness to appear. Writer Kang said, “After the Korean Wave began in Japan, dramas from the Japanese colonial era disappeared. Looking at the situation in which Park Seo-joon and Han Seo-hee said, “There were no actors willing to appear,”the decision to appear in “Gyeongseong Creature”was confirmed. You can guess how big of a driving force it was for the production.

‘Gyeongseong Creature’ is about the Japanese soldiers creating a monster through biological experiments on Koreans at a hospital in Gyeongseong in the spring of 1945, and Jang Tae-sang (Park Seo-joon), the owner of the best pawn shop in Gyeongseong, searching for the missing person. It depicts a story in which characters, including Todukkun Yoon Chae-ok (Han So-hee), live the hot and painful times of that era. ‘Gyeongseong Creature’ ranked first in Korea just three days after its release, and ranked third in the Netflix Global Top 10 (non-English) category, and ranked in the top 69 countries around the world, including Brazil, Japan, Singapore, France, and Australia. It gained popularity by being included in the top 10 list.

Park Seo-joon cited the group of various people who lived during the Japanese colonial era and the charm of Jang Tae-sang, the most wealthy person in Gyeongseong and the owner of the pawn shop Geumokdang, as the first reasons for appearing. “The reasons for choosing a project are different every time, but I have the mindset that I must always show a new side of myself as an actor. This time, there were expectations that we would be able to show a different side of ourselves through a period drama. I liked seeing the many people who lived in that era. The character Taesang was also attractive. I was curious about everything, what kind of weight people living in this era lived their daily lives with, and how they could express it with their breath. I was also curious about how the relationships between the characters would be formed and develop. I had high expectations because everything comes out as I express it. Since the creature is created entirely through VFX work, I had expectations about the acting that would be performed with the creature.”

At the beginning of the play, Jang Tae-sang is a character who is only interested in money and is not interested in patriotism or justice. When Ishikawa’s police officer’s mistress, Myeong-ja, goes missing, he is threatened by her to find her. He becomes entangled with her thief, Chae-ok, and faces a completely different life from her. Regarding the process of expressing the character, Park Seo-joon said, “I had to see the entire emotional line of the character Jang Tae-sang. I thought that as the scope of change grew, Jang Tae-sang’s charm also improved. As a boy who grew up hearing his mother’s will to live, protecting his life would have been most important to Taesang. In this way, he becomes the most wealthy person in Gyeongseong, but the moment he witnesses Chae-ok and the experiments at Ongseong Hospital, he faces a major change. In order for him to enjoy the status he had at the time, he would have had to deftly accumulate assets without hesitation in doing difficult things. “In the beginning, we emphasized that aspect, and since the drama itself has a lot of heavy and heavy content, we added a little bit of wit to open up a space for viewers to breathe through Tae-sang.”

As Seasons 1 and 2 of ‘Gyeongseong Creature’ were filmed over two years, it is the longest filming period for a single work that Park Seo-joon has experienced. There was a break of about 3-4 months between seasons 1 and 2, but since it was a work that was filmed over four seasons twice, the impressions seemed to be unique.

“After filming one project for nearly two years, it was very exciting at first, but after some time passed, I felt a little stagnant and was exhausted. Then, I fought again and said, “Let’s try hard.” Having such a long period of filming experience was a great help in my life. I felt like I was a civil servant. What I was most grateful for was that I worked with the actors and all the staff from start to finish during the two-year filming period. Considering that so many people worked together on the work, ‘Gyeongseong Creature’ is a work that means a lot to me.”

I shared the most emotions with Han So-hee, who plays Chae-ok, in the drama, and we became of great support to each other on the actual filming set. Although day and night were reversed and it was a scene of fierce struggle with action scenes and emotional scenes, the actors’ determination to convey the feelings of people who lived in the spring of 1945 to global viewers through their work was firm.

“After filming with actress Han So-hee for two years, I feel like I have a really good younger sibling. This work has a lot of meaning to me, but I think it also has a special meaning to one actor. We also talked a lot about choosing our next project. What I felt from actress Sohee while filming together was that she really did her best at every moment. I really acted like I was dying every time. Having experienced burnout myself, I hope that actress Han So-hee will control her pace. If you use up all your energy too much at once, you may run out of energy. “I want to support him for the rest of his life because he is a really good actor.”

Sports Korea Reporter Mo Shin-jeong msj@sportshankook.co.kr