If there is one word to summarize South Korean actress Park Bo-young’s acting career, we would say it is ‘versatile’.
She has never failed to impress her viewers in every role that she takes, be it in a melodrama, horror or even romantic comedy.
Here are 10 K-dramas and movies starring Park Bo-young you should watch:
1.Scandal Makers (2008)
This movie was so successful that it had Argentine, Chinese and Indian remakes which were released in 2010, 2016 and 2020 respectively.
Scandal Makers (2008) follows the story of Nam Hyun-soo (Cha Tae-hyun), a popular radio DJ who once a more popular teen star.
One day, his doorbell rings and there stand a young lady named Hwang Jung-nam (Park Bo-young) and a young boy named Ki-dong (Wang Suk-hyun).
Jung-nam reveals to Hyun-soo that she is his daughter and her son Ki-dong is his grandson.
Hyun-soo refuses to believe her at first but then forced to accept the truth after a DNA test confirmed what Jung-nam has claimed.
Things get complicated when the daughter and father pair are mistaken to be romantically involved.
This was director Kang Hyeong-cheol’s first ever film and it became the highest grossing Korean movie in 2008.
The film earned Park numerous awards including Best New Actress in Film and Most Popular Actress (Film) in Baeksang Arts Awards 2009 and Best New Actress awards at Blue Dragon Film Awards as well as at Chunsa Film Art Awards.
2.A Werewolf Boy (2012)
Most people would agree that A Werewolf Boy (2012) served as the breakout role for Korean actor Song Joong-ki in which he plays the role of a feral boy who behaves like a wild beast.
However Park, we must say, also brought so much to the table in the movie.
In the movie, she plays the role of the teenage girl who tries to befriends and attempts to civilize Song’s character.
The movie surpassed 7 million admissions to become one of the most successful Korean melodramas of all time.
Again, Park won several awards for her role including the Best Actress at the 4th Pierson Movie Festival.
3.Hot Young Bloods (2014)
From a fantasy-romance film A Werewolf Boy, Park offered something different in this movie which is more relatable to most people.
Hot Young Bloods is a teen romantic comedy film that depicts the loves, rivalries and friendships among four high school students.
Set in Hongseong County, Sout Chungcheong Province in 1982, Park plays the role of Young-sook.
She is the feared leader of a female gang at Hongseong Agricultural High School.
Despite her tough attitude, she is secretly harbouring crush with the school’s biggest playboy in school Joong-gil (Lee Jong-suk).
When a new female transfer student from the big city of Seoul comes to this rural town, it changes the whole dynamic of the school.
Since her character swears so much in the movie, Park later revealed in an interview that she did have fun swearing especially in a dialect.
Overall, the film is a fun, coming-of-age film that pretty nostalgic for those viewers who grew up in the 80s.
4.Oh My Ghost! (2015)
After seven years of absence from the small screen, Park takes up the leading role in romantic comedy drama series Oh My Ghost! (2015).
What makes this role different from Park’s previous works is that she actually play two characters in the series.
Na Bong-sun (Park Bo-young) is a loner who has an extremely timid personality and low self-esteem.
Due to this, she constantly getting reprimanded at her job as an assistant chef at Sun Restaurant.
Her life changes when she gets possessed by a lustful virgin ghost named Shin Soon-ae (Kim Seul-gi).
Believing that only by losing her virginity that she will be able to move on to the afterlife, Soon-ae is determined to seduce as many men as she can while she is possessing Bong-sun’s body.
Viewers find it entertaining to watch as Park switching between her two characters, the timid Bong-sun and the cheerful Soon-ae.
The drama was a commercial and critical hit and earning Park the Best Actress award at the 4th APAN Star Awards.
Her impressive role in this rom-com also garnered her reputation as the ‘romantic comedy queen’ by the Korean press.
5.Collective Invention (2015)
The Collective Invention is a 1934 painting by Belgian surrealist artist Rene Magritte. It depicts a fish merged with a woman’s legs stranded on the beach. It supposed to be a mockery of the traditional mermaid where he removed the beauty by depicting the opposites.
Writer and director Kwon Oh-kwang was so inspired by this painting that he created a character similar to the painting in his film Collective Invention (2015).
It follows the story of Park Gu (Lee Kwang-soo) who decides to take part in a clinical test for a pharmaceutical company for 300,000 won.
The medical experiment gone horribly wrong turning Park Gu into a half-fish, half-human mutant.
After escaping from the laboratory, the poor man visits a woman with whom he had a one-night stand.
But the woman Ju-jin (Park Bo-young) sells him back to the pharmaceutical company.
During the press conference of the film, Park shared that she participated in the film to highlight some of the social issues that influenced the movie plots.
Director Kwon revealed that he adapts various social issues to make the movie such as Hwang Woo-suk’s cloning scandal, the MBC TV union workers’ stroke and high youth unemployment rate. Hwang was a professor of theriogenology and biotechnology who had claimed to create human embryonic stem cells by cloning.
This black comedy film was screened in the Vanguard section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.
6.The Silenced (2015)
When asked why did she took up the role in The Silenced (2015), Park answered, “Ju-ran’s range of emotion in the movie is very deep and wide, and she is very different at the beginning and end of the film. This was a film that made me test my limits.”
In the movie, the actress plays a student in an isolated girls’ boarding school where its students begin to show strange symptoms and disappear one by one.
Park’s character Ju-ran’s worries are dismissed by the teachers but she too begins to show some of the strange symptoms.
The film set in Gyeongseong in 1938 during the Japanese occupation.
Overall, this mystery-thriller film failed to impress the critics.
According to The Korea Herald that despite the disappointing plot, the leading ladies Park Bo-young, Uhm Ji-won and Park So-dam leave a lasting impression, commenting, “The Silenced ultimately fails in its overambitious attempt to combine box office-friendly action and thrills with picturesque emotion but it remains engaging thanks to its excellent cast.”
7.Strong Girl Dong-soon (2016)
Do Bong-soon (Park Bo-young) was born with superhuman strength, a trait that is hereditary and passed along only to the women in her family.
In the same time, her dream is to create a video game with herself as the main character.
She generally hides her super strength from people around her especially from her crush In Guk-doo (Ji Soo).
One day, her unusual power is accidentally found out by rich heir and CEO of a gaming company Ahn Min-hyuk (Park Hyung-sik) who subsequently hired her as a personal bodyguard.
The series was a commercial hit and became one of the highest-rated Korean dramas on cable television history.
There are so many things we love about this drama including the chemistry on-screen between Park Bo-young and Park Hyung-sik and the suspense and the mystery behind Bong-soon’s neighbourhood.
8.On Your Wedding Day (2018)
For this rom-com film, Park reunites with her former castmate from Hot Young Bloods (2014) Kim Young-kwang.
It follows the story of Hwang Woo-yeon (Kim Young-kwang) who receives a wedding invitation from his first love from high school.
From there, he starts to reminisce all the things he went through to be with her and the ups and downs they had together.
Park plays the role of Hwan Seung-hee, Hwang’s first love.
With a simple plot line and amazing storytelling by the director as well as impressive performance by the cast, the film was a box office hit and unsurprisingly received positive reviews.
9.Abyss (2019)
This drama is one of our top picks for Korean reincarnation series.
Go Se-yeon (Park Bo-young) is a beautiful prosecution lawyer at the top of her game, and Cha Min is her friend, an unattractive but rich heir to a cosmetics empire.
They are both revived into different bodies by supernatural beings using an “Abyss” after their deaths in separate incidents.
The “Abyss” is a celestial object which has the power to revive anything that has died; the reincarnated bodies take on the appearance of that person’s soul.
Go Se-yeon takes on a ‘plainer’ appearance, whilst Cha Min becomes very attractive and young; virtually the opposite of before.
They start working together to find out the reason for their revival and who caused Go Se-yeon’s death.
10.Doom At Your Service (2021)
Tak Dong-kyung (Park Bo-young), an editor for a web novel company who lives a fairly ordinary life until she stumbles into an unexpected fate.
All in a single day, she finds out she is dying from glioblastoma and has only three months to live, learns that her boyfriend is a father-to-be and has a wife, gets scolded by her superior at work, and is spied on by a pervert before the pervert falls into a sinkhole.
As she drinks her problems away, she happens to see a shooting star from her rooftop apartment and drunkenly wishes for the world to be doomed.
Her unusual wish is heard by Myul Mang (Seo In-guk) a messenger between gods and humans.
He was born between dark and light: when he breathes, countries disappear; when he walks, the seasons collapse; when he smiles, a life is extinguished.
All he has to do is exist for something to fall into ruin. This is not his intention but simply his fate.
On his birthday, he gets to choose a human’s wish to fulfill.
Sick of his fate, he chooses to fulfill Dong-kyung’s wish to end the world.
Dong-kyung ends up signing a hundred-day contract with Myul Mang, risking everything she has ever known.
Watch the trailer here.
Upcoming projects starring Park Bo-young
Fans of Park Bo-young can look forward for her working with Lee Byung-hun and Park Seo-joon in an upcoming South Korean disaster-thriller film.
Directed by Um Tae-hwa, the film is based on the second part of webtoon Pleasant Bullying by Kim Sung-nik which is about an earthquake destruction and its aftermath.
Our beloved actress will also star in a Netflix Original drama Daily Dose of Sunshine taking the lead role of Jung Da-eun.
The drama is based on the actual real-life experiences of a psychiatric nurse and will revolve around the story of nurse Jung.
Director Lee Jae-gyoo who directed the incredibly successful Netflix horror series All of Us Are Dead will direct the series.
