‘Cheongseol’ Hong Kyung “Filming my first kiss scene with Noh Yoon-seo, I was incredibly nervous”[Interview]
Photo provided by Management mmm
‘Cheongsul’, a remake of the Taiwanese film of the same name that was released in 2010, is a youth romance that tells the story of Yong-jun (Hong Kyung), who works as a deliveryman at his parents‘ lunchbox shop, and falls in love at first sight with Yeoreum (Noh Yoon-seo), who takes care of his hearing-impaired swimmer younger sister. Hong Kyung and Noh Yoon-seo said, “The fact that the main actors are all in their 20s is the biggest strength of our movie,” and were confident that “you’ll be able to properly feel the fresh and cool charm.” The pure and unadorned Yong-jun character is exactly like the real Hong Kyung, but their ways of dealing with love are quite different. He said, “Yong-jun‘s honesty with his emotions and ’straightforwardness‘ toward the other person was the complete opposite of myself, who has a hard time approaching the person I like, which is why he was all the more charming.”
“I’m a timid person. Even when I like someone, I can‘t approach them easily, and even if I muster up the courage to take a step forward, I often get scared by the other person’s subtle reaction and end up taking ten steps back. But Yong-jun tries hard to approach the other person in a pure way. I also learned a lot while acting as the blunt yet courageous Yong-jun.”
The scene where Yong-jun and Yeoreum first kiss was the ‘first kiss scene’ of his acting career. He recalled that time and laughed, saying that the trembling that was clearly shown on screen was “my real state at the time, not fake.”“I was really nervous. Actually, the script didn’t describe the character’s trembling in detail, but when I thought about it being our first kiss, I was so nervous. I can still remember the atmosphere when we approached each other to kiss.”
Most of the lines in the drama had to be delivered using ‘sign language’, but it wasn’t too burdensome. Rather, he recalled that the newness of acting in sign language drew him more to this project.
“I started learning sign language three months before filming, and I gave up the idea that I had to learn quickly. Rather, I thought I should devote enough time and heart to it. I believed that if I focused on that time completely, my body would naturally feel and learn not only sign language but also how to express emotions in sign language.”
What he learned may be just sign language, but what he learned through sign language is even greater. This is because he realized “the importance of an attitude of focusing solely on the other person.”.
“To communicate with sign language, you have to focus on the other person more than when you speak, and you really have to give them your full attention. You have to keep looking into their eyes and not take your eyes off their gestures. You really have to focus at every moment. Through this process, I learned the attitude of not acting just for myself but acting after fully feeling the other person, so I think it was an even more valuable experience.”
Reporter Seungmi Lee smlee@donga.com
