‘Great actor’ Song Kang-ho meets the audience with a light and refreshing film. Instead of the heavy and serious characters he has played in succession, this time he chose a petit bourgeois character armed with humor and sense. This is through the hit film ‘1Win’.

In ‘1Win’, which depicts the story of a perennial last-place women‘s professional volleyball team struggling for just one victory, he plays coach Kim Woo-jin, a former volleyball player with a winning percentage of less than 10% throughout his career as a coach. Song Kang-ho, whom we met at a cafe in Jongno-gu, Seoul on the 2nd, said, “I chose this work because I like the meaning and emotion that a single victory gives in a life that seems to go nowhere no matter what I do.”

○“Thank you for the cameo appearance of Kim Yeon-kyung.”

He laughed as he said that after meeting this work, he felt “the cool feeling in his mouth when he bites into a peppermint candy.” He also said that he was happy that it was his first sports film in 24 years since “The Foul King” in 2000.

“Sometimes I get asked which film I think of among my works, and I always answer ”The Foul King.“ ”The Foul King“ and ”1 Win“ are similar. A person whose life has not gone well regains his confidence and presence through sports. In particular, ‘1승’, unlike ‘The King of Fouls’, which deals with the individual sport of wrestling, also has the thrill of teamwork.”

As it is the first film in the Korean film industry to deal with volleyball, there was also active support from real volleyball fans. Director-turned-commentator Cha Sang-hyun and player-turned-commentator Han Yu-mi helped train the actors who played the players, and directors Kim Se-jin and Shin Jin-sik, as well as volleyball superstar Kim Yeon-kyung, made special appearances.””Even though Kim Yeon-kyung was very busy at the time, she willingly came to the Boryeong filming set in South Chungcheong Province to film us. When I saw her spike right in front of my eyes, I could feel her truly fearsome power, which was different from what I saw on TV. Considering Kim Yeon-kyung’s condition, we only filmed cameos without lines, but she has such great sense that I think she would have done very well even if she had lines.”

○“I have no desire to advance to Hollywood”

Most of the actors who played the players in the play were newcomers with well-known faces, and she said that working with many young rookie actresses was a “new and meaningful experience.” When the actors gathered in twos and threes in case they were uncomfortable, she laughed and said, “I couldn‘t fit in well, but I watched with a fatherly smile.”

“(The acting of the new actors) is like unprocessed organic vegetables. They had a really fresh and innocent charm that broke away from the typical mold mold. Because of social distancing during the filming period, we couldn’t have private gatherings of more than four people, so I regret not being able to buy the actors even a single piece of beef. Even after the release, I decided to buy him meat. Haha!”

Like a character in a movie who only digs one well for volleyball, Song Kang-ho is walking the path of acting in Chungmuro. He has been receiving a lot of directing offers and also Hollywood offers after ‘Parasite’, but he emphasized that he will continue to act consistently from this place and now.

“In fact, I have received and am still receiving offers for several works involving famous Hollywood directors and actors, but I am politely declining them. Language is very important in acting. Of course, I can act by memorizing English lines, but I think I am an actor who lacks the ability to show deep acting in a language other than Korean.”


Reporter Seung-mi Lee smlee@donga.com