Gong Yoo is drawing attention for his powerful presence that is no less than that of the lead and supporting actors in the Netflix series ‘Squid Game’ Season 2, which he made a special appearance in. As the series broke various global records and became a huge hit immediately after its release, global fans‘ interest in Gong Yoo also skyrocketed. There were even responses like, ‘He wrote a new masterpiece in his lifetime with his special appearance.’

Gong Yoo took on the role of the so-called ‘Ttakjinam’, who acts as a decoy to recruit participants in the life-threatening game. In Season 1, he only appeared briefly in a brief scene as a simple recruiter, but his role increased significantly in Season 2, taking up most of the first episode. In the process, his unfortunate childhood, his background as a game recruiter, and his twisted beliefs were also revealed, drawing attention.

In particular, in this season, he showed his psychopathic side without reservation, such as feeling joy by trampling on a large amount of bread in front of starving homeless people, and making a group of loan sharks who received Sung Ki-hoon’s (Lee Jung-jae) order him to play rock-paper-scissors and take his life, thereby increasing the tension of the drama to the max.

Above all, the scene where he plays Russian roulette (a game where two or more people take turns pulling the trigger with one bullet in a gun) with Sung Ki-hoon risking his life is considered the highlight of the entire second season. In that scene, Gong Yoo completely erased his image as a sweet prince from many romance dramas and showed a completely new side of himself that he had never shown before, with crazy eyes and a bittersweet smile.
Online, reactions such as “It‘s hard to understand how Gong Yoo has never played a villain before” poured in, and the scene was produced as a short-form video titled ‘Gong Yoo’s Legendary Method Acting’, garnering over 4 million views. YouTube videos containing overseas viewers‘ reactions to Gong Yoo’s acting also became a hot topic.

Film critic Lee Dong-jin also chose Gong Yoo‘s Sticker Man as the most impressive character in Season 2 on his YouTube channel ‘Lee Dong-jin’s Phaeacia’, saying, “It‘s the most perfectly created character, with nothing to add or subtract. He also evaluated that the most fun episode out of all 7 Season 2 episodes was the first episode (where Gong Yoo was active)”.

He explained that the intensity of this character is “It comes from the actor’s upright gentlemanly image, his neat and handsome exterior, but his devastated interior, violent and cold-hearted mind, and the huge gap between the two.


Reporter Seungmi Lee smlee@donga.com