It is with his acting talents that Kim Seon-ho returns, but this time in dramas and more endearing characters. Three years after starring in the 2021 TV series “Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha,” a slice-of-life romantic comedy, Kim Seon-ho is back on the K-drama scene. This great South Korean actor will star in different interesting storylines with characters each more interesting than the other.
In my article on Actors You Need to Know, I talked about him like this: “ Kim is an expert in the art of expressing and showing the different facets that make up his characters and capturing the entirety of their experiences“. He started out as a stage actor and performed impressively in several plays before making his on-screen debut in Good Manager in 2017. Kim rose to stardom with 100 Days My Prince (2018), Welcome to Waikiki 2 (2019), then with Start-up (2020), and achieved worldwide popularity with Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha.
It should be remembered that it was with The Childe (2023), a neo-noir action thriller directed by Park Hoon-jung, that Kim made his film debut last year in which he played Nobleman ( Gwigongja), a mysterious pursuer who sows chaos in the life of Kopino boxer Marco Han (Kang Tae-joo), who travels to South Korea to reunite with his estranged father.
Besides the fact that the film was praised for its bloody alleyways, tense sequences and unexpected twists, Kim’s robust performance particularly stood out as the provocative, dark and sarcastic killer, which has nothing to do with see with the roles we usually know.
Among his upcoming K-dramas is the sci-fi “The Tyrant,” directed by Park Hoon-jung, starring Cha Seung-won, Kim Seon-ho and Kim Kang-woo, which is about the intelligence agency American who learns of the existence of a clandestine project, namely Project Tyrant which is a strategy of the Korean government to manufacture a biological weapon in order to increase human capabilities.
The United States then requested the cancellation of the project and the recovery of the samples, after which the weapon would be returned to them once the experiment was dismantled. It is then that a sudden attack shakes things up. Quickly, an American secret service agent tries to recover the weapon himself, while a former agent responsible for killing the participants in the project enters the scene. Meanwhile, it was Kim Seon-ho’s Director Choi, a secret Korean government employee who oversees Project Tyrant, who ordered his team to secure the weapon.
The series is expected to premiere globally on Disney+ in the second half of 2024.
Then we find “In the Net”, a second series based on the detective novel Second Sister by Chan Ho Kei, a collaboration between Kim Jee-woon and Park Bo-ram as directors. While Kim plays the elusive hacker N, Ai (Park Gyu-young) struggles to come to terms with the loss of her younger sister, who killed herself after being the target of extreme internet harassment. That’s when Ai comes across N and uses him to find out more about everything that happened. Reportedly, production of In the Net has been completed and is scheduled for release this year.
Among Kim’s films, “Can This Love Be Translated?” » whose title is only provisional, with Go Youn-jung, is probably the most anticipated. According to a Netflix release, the series could be the “next big global romantic comedy sensation.” It follows lead actress Cha Mu-hee (Go) as she hires Ju Ho-jin (Kim), a multilingual translator with exceptional language skills in Italian, Japanese and English.
Despite the disagreements caused by the two individuals’ conflicting opinions, they manage to grow closer to each other the more time they spend together, leading to moments of empathy and perhaps of love.
It has been confirmed that Can This Love Be Translated? will be streamed on Netflix; as for the release date, it still remains to be determined.
In which project did you enjoy Kim Seon-ho’s performances the most?