Song Joong-ki revealed his special affection for Colombia through the movie ‘Bogota: Land of Last Chance’ (Bogota).

The movie, which will be released on the 31st, is a crime film that depicts the story of a boy named Kook-hee (Song Joong-ki) who heads to Bogota with his family after the 1997 IMF (International Monetary Fund) foreign exchange crisis and gets entangled with the local Korean community president, Sergeant Park (Kwon Hae-hyo) and another powerful figure there, Soo-young (Lee Hee-joon).

Song Joong-ki attended a press preview held at COEX Megabox in Samseong-dong, Seoul on the afternoon of the 19th ahead of the release and said, “The filming locations were relatively unfamiliar places, so it was a series of difficult challenges, and there were always many unexpected variables.”In the movie, Song Joong-ki shows his struggles for survival from the time he arrives in Bogota and his struggles to become the president of the Korean community. He expressed everything from his youthful teens to his twenties and thirties. He even fluently spoke Spanish to perfectly portray a local Korean.

He said, “I wanted to experience what it was like to speak Spanish, just like I did in the Italian line in the drama ‘Vincenzo’ in the past, and I was very curious about new things.”

He continued, “Colombia is a special place,” and emphasized, “My mother-in-law is Colombian. Many of my wife’s family live there, and Colombia, which I felt after getting married, is very exciting, affectionate, and the food (taste) is crazy. The people are also affectionate, and it’s not the dark image of the past.”

The film, which began filming in 2020, was the first of Song Joong-ki’s recent leading roles to be filmed, but it ended up being released the latest.

He said, “In terms of the order of the projects, this film was filmed the fastest, and ‘Vincenzo’ was filmed in between. After that, I filmed ‘The Youngest Son of a Chaebol Family’, ‘Hwaran’, and ‘Rogiwan’ in that order,“ he said.

He continued, ”I‘m really nervous and happy to be meeting you like this after four and a half years.“



Reporter Lee Jeong-yeon annjoy@donga.com