If you are a big fan of second generation K-pop music, then you must have seen Bang Yong-guk’s music video for ‘I Remember’.
Some of us may have laid our eyes on Park Seo-joon for the very first time, thanks to this music video.
Who would have thought the rookie performer who passionately kissed and intensely kicked some ass in the MV is now one of South Korea’s biggest actors?
Park made his entertainment debut through the MV and later went on to star in both film and television series.
Here are 10 Korean dramas and movies you should watch if you are a fan of Park Seo-joon:
1.The Chronicles of Evil (2015)
For his role in this movie, Park was nominated for numerous awards such as Best New Actor and Popular Star Award at the 36th Blue Dragon Film Awards as well as the Best New Actor at the 52nd Baeksang Arts Awards.
The film follows the story of a decorated detective who got himself entangled in a taxi driver’s death.
Just days before his promotion, Choi Chang-sik dozes off on his way home after a celebratory drink with his colleagues.
He wakes up to find that his taxi driver has taken him to remote mountain trail and has pulled a knife on him.
As the two struggle for the knife, Choi accidentally kills the taxi driver in self-defence.
Worried about how the incident would impact his career, he covers up the body and flees.
The next day, the taxi driver’s dead body has been strung up on a crane in front of the police station gaining a widespread media attention.
Choi is assigned to the case and he tries to misdirect the investigation as well as the media evidence.
Then a man claiming to be the killer turns himself in and threatens Choi to reveal the truth unless he reopens an old case.
Park plays the role of a rookie policeman named Cha Dong-jae who grows suspicious of Choi and begins to investigate him.
2.Midnight Runners (2017)
Directed by Jason Kim, this action comedy film is Kim’s first mainstream film.
It circles around two students of Korean National Police University; Park Ki-joon (Park Seo-jeon) and Kang Hee-yeol (Kang Ha-neul).
After coming back from a club one night, they witness a kidnapping.
When the duo report the case to the police, the investigators is busy with the kidnapping of a son of a business mogul.
Hence, Ki-joon and Hee-yeol embark on journey of amateur investigation filled with action and humour to catch the kidnappers.
The movie became the seventh highest-grossing South Korean film in 2017.
Park, in the meantime, won several awards including Best New Actor at the 37th Korean Association of Film Critics Awards, 54th Grand Bell Awards and 9th Korea Film Reporters Association Film Awards (KOFRA).
3.The Divine Fury (2019)
In this action horror film, Park reunites with director Jason Kim who also wrote the script for the movie.
This time, Park plays the role of Yong-hoo, a martial arts champion who gains divine powers to fight against a powerful evil force.
He has a tragic childhood in which he lost his parents. Since then, he hates the idea of deity.
Channeling his anger through martial arts, Yong-hoo becomes a successful MMA fighter.
However, one incident changes his life completely. Yong-hoo suddenly develops stigmata which forces him to seek the help of Father Ahn (Ahn Sung-ki).
The priest sees Yong-hoo’s ability to defeat and the two becomes partner to fight against demonic activity.
John DeFore from The Hollywood Reporter called Park’s performance ‘expressionless’ in The Divine Fury.
He stated, “Director Kim and his star Park had something of a local hit in 2017 with the action comedy Midnight Runners, but any charisma the actor might’ve shown there is hard to see here. Good looking but generally expressionless, Park finds neither brooding anger nor engaging bewilderment in Yong-hoo as the character grapples with what’s happening to him.”
Perhaps a serious, emotional role is not Park’s forte, you will be the judge.
4.A Witch’s Love (2014)
What do Park Seo-joon, Park Bo-gum, Lee Jong-suk, Jang Ki-yong, Rowoon, Kang Ha-neul and Jung Hae-in have in common besides being young, hot and talented actors?
They have all acted in ‘noona’ romance dramas. A ‘noona’ is what a male call an older sister.
A Witch’s Love (2014) is not only Park’s first noona romance drama but also his first leading role in televisions series.
He plays the role of a 25-year-old Yoon Dong-ha who runs a small errand center with his friend. His leading woman is played by Uhm Jung-hwa.
Uhm in the drama is a 39-year-old investigative news reporter named Ban Ji-yeon whose colleagues call her a ‘witch’ behind her back.
In real life, Park and Uhm have 19-year age gap. Despite this, their chemistry in the drama is obvious as one of their kiss scenes is definitely in the K-drama kissing scenes’ Hall of Fame.
Viewers have called it ‘The Beer Kiss’. Much like the pasta scene in ‘Lady and The Tramp’, when a can of beer overflows, Ji-yeon and Dong-ha immediately stop the foam from spilling over by slurping it at the same time.
Then after what the Japanese would call a ‘moe’ moment, Dong-ha grabs Ji-yeon for an intense kiss.
Well, that is a scene makes the whole series worth watching.
5.Kill Me, Heal Me (2015)
Speaking of chemistry, Park shares so much sparks with a fellow actor in this drama that they won the Best Couple Award at the MBC Drama Awards 2015.
Kill Me, Heal Me (2015) follows the story of Cha Do-hyun (Ji Sung), a business heir who is suffering from dissociative identity disorder.
He tries to gain control over his life with the help of psychiatric resident Oh Ri-jin (Hwang Jung-eum).
Meanwhile, Ri-jin’s twin brother Oh Ri-on (Park Seo-joon) is following Do-hyun as he seeks for inspiration as a novelist.
Even though Park is acting alongside with two more experienced actors such as Ji and Hwang, he shines in his own way through this drama.
Besides winning the Best Couple Award with Ji Sung, Park also won the Excellence Award Actor in a Miniseries during the same award show.
6.She Was Pretty (2015)
In the same year, Park reunites with his former co-star Hwang Jung-eum in She was Pretty (2015). Instead of as his sister, Hwang this time plays as Park’s love interest.
The former fictional siblings becomes two childhood friends who have harbour feeling for each other in this romantic comedy.
Set in the backdrop of a fashion magazine’s publishing office, Hwang is Kim Hye-jin while Park takes the role of Ji Sung-joon.
Hye-jin grew up as a beautiful, wealthy and smart girl but lost everything when her family went bankrupt.
She is now becomes embarrassed at her life and insecure with her look. So when her childhood friend Sung-joon asks them to reunite again as adults, Hye-jin refuses.
Instead, she asks her best friend Min Ha-ri (Go Joon-hee) to pretend to be her.
She was Pretty was a hit in China, pushing Park’s popularity in that country.
7.Hwarang: The Poet Warrior Youth (2017)
For BTS fans aka ARMY, this drama is known for being the series in which V made his acting debut under his real name Kim Tae-hyung.
To this day, it remains his only acting gig.
V, however, still remains friends with two of his co-stars from Hwarang namely Park Seo-joon and Park Hyung-sik.
Park Seo-joon acts as Moo-myung, a young man of low birth and becomes a legendary Hwarang warrior while Park Hyung-sik is Sammaekjong, a young King who joins the Hwarang under a hidden identity.
Despite the star-studded cast, the plot is messy and not attractive enough to keep viewers glued to the screen.
But then why is the drama on this list? Just because of its star-studded cast.
Where else are you going to watch Park Seo-joon along with K-pop idols Park Hyung-sik from ZE:A, Minho from SHINEE and of course V from BTS sharing the same screen?
8.Fight for My Way (2017)
While Hwarang is a miss for Park, Fight for My Way is a definite hit for him in his career.
It was raved for its realistic plot and great performances from its cast including Park.
In the series, Park plays the role of a former glorified taekwondo player who is now a nameless MMA fighter named Ko Dong-man.
His long time best friend Choi Ae-ra (Kim Ji-won) is a department store employee who dreams of becoming an announcer.
Along with their two other friends Kim Joo-man (Ahn Jae-hong) and Baek Seol-hee (Song Ha-yoon), the group is like any other young adults in this world who are trying to find their places in this society.
The series was a hit in South Korea, topping ratings in its time slot.
During the KBS Drama Awards 2017, Park bagged the awards for Excellence Award for Actor in a Miniseries and Netizen Award for Actor category.
9.What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim (2018)
No matter how much Park tries to diversify his acting roles, we have to accept that rom-com is his home ground.
Based on the novel of the same title by Jung Kyung-yoon which was first published in 2013, the story was also adapted into webtoon comic by KakaoPage in 2015.
After almost ten years working together, Kim Mi-so (Park Min-young) announces that she will resign from her post as a secretary.
Her boss Lee Young-joon (Park Seo-joon) is not having it.
While trying to ways to convince Mi-so to stay as his secretary, Young-joon unknowingly finds himself falling in love with her.
As they spend more time at a personal level, Young-joon and Mi-so find out they share a traumatic past together like 90 per cent of fictional couples in K-dramas.
Again, the series was a hit and the Korean press called him the ‘master of romantic comedy’.
His performance also earned him the Top Excellence Award for Actor in a Miniseries during the APAN Star Awards 2018.
10.Itaewon Class (2020)
Unlike any of his television roles in previous project, Itaewon Class (2020) shows the darker side of Park.
Here, Park takes up the role of Park Sae-ro-yi who founded a bar-restaurant in Itaewon called DanBam.
He was expelled from high school for punching CEO’s son named Geun-won who was at that time bullying a classmate.
Sae-ro-yi’s anger toward Geun-won escalated when his father was killed by Geun-won’s reckless driving.
Due to this, he attacks Geun-won which later caused him three-year imprisonment.
Seven years after his release from jail, Sae-ro-yi opens DanBam with the goal to expanding it into a franchise and defeating Geun-won’s chaebol company.
Based on the webtoon of the same name, the series won Best Drama Series at the 25th Asian Television Awards.
As for Park, he was nominated for Best Actor in Television at the prestigious 56th Baeksang Arts Awards.
Park Seo-joon’s upcoming projects
Park has two films from his home country that are coming to us. Concrete Utopia is an upcoming disaster-thriller film directed by Um Tae-hwa. We expect to see him starring alongside Lee Byung-hun and Park Bo-young.
His second upcoming film is Dream which was recently wrapped on Apr 13, 2022 in Hungary.
Park will put on a hat as a football coach for a special national soccer team. The team consists of homeless people who never played a ball before but will compete in the Homeless World Cup.
In addition to this. Park will make his comeback to the small screen in a historical drama sets in 1945.
Gyeongseong Creature is set to depict Gyeongseong (the old name for Seoul) in its darkest era.
The filming is currently in progress but the series is scheduled to premiere on tvN in 2023.
Of all Park’s upcoming projects, the most talked about is none other than The Marvels. He is reported has been cast in an undisclosed role in the sequel to Captain Marvel (2019).
The film is scheduled to be released in the US on July 28, 2023 as part of Phase Five of the MCU.
Whatever his role is, we hope that he will make us proud.
