80% of the drama‘s success came from Yoo Yeon-seok’s (40) ‘Melodramatic Eyes’. Thanks to his innocent love acting in the recently concluded MBC drama ‘The Call You Just Got’, these days, wherever he goes, he is called “Baek Sa-eon” instead of “Yoo Yeon-seok”.

The interest and popularity he receives is not limited to Korea. He is flocking from all over the world, to the point where he says “Foreign languages that I have never seen before are flooding SNS.”

In fact, the number of SNS followers ‘before and after’ appearing in the drama skyrocketed from 2.4 million to 4.2 million, and in a survey on the popularity of TV and OTT drama casts in December, he beat Lee Jung-jae of ‘Squid Game Season’ to take first place in terms of popularity.

Yoo Yeon-seok plays the role of Baek Sa-eon, the spokesperson for the presidential office, and presents a cold-hearted character who doesn‘t seem to bleed even if you prick him with a needle. Viewers also fell for him as he revealed his true nature as a woman who had loved his politically arranged wife, Hee-joo (Chae Soo-bin), since childhood.

“I felt good because I worked hard to film it. It was a hot topic in Korea, and the response was hot overseas as well, and it’s consistently ranked high on the Netflix global chart, so I‘m grateful and proud. I think Baek Sa-eon’s pure love story resonated. Our drama dealt with the innocent love of the old popular K-dramas, right? In a way, it‘s been a long time since we’ve had a character expressing the innocent love that we‘ve been hesitant about recently. I think they welcomed it by saying, ’Yes, this is the innocent love of the K-drama that we‘ve been wanting.’”

In fact, Yoo Yeon-seok was hesitant to choose this drama. When he was offered the role a year ago, he was filming the thriller drama ‘Fortune Teller’, where he played a murderer, so he said, “I felt burdened by the overlapping genres.” This is because the thriller genre was highlighted in the beginning of the drama with the setting, such as receiving a threatening phone call from a blackmailer.

“Actually, at the time, I wanted to do a traditional romance. After reading the script for Part 4, I thought, ‘Is this a thriller again?’ But the writer told me that we would be showing the passionate innocent love of one man. I decided to start off with a cold character and show a character that changes after receiving advice from those around me.”

Thanks to Yoo Yeon-seok, he gained another “life character.” It is a great fortune for an actor to be able to find common ground with characters in his works, such as Chilbong-i in “Reply 1994,” Dong-mae in “Mr. Sunshine,” Dong-joo in “Romantic Doctor, Teacher Kim,” and Ahn Jung-won in “Hospital Playlist.”

“Maybe Baek Sa-eon is like a comprehensive gift set of the characters I’ve played so far. There’s Dong-mae in there, and it seems to be all of Kang Dong-joo’s strengths. His real personality? It’s embarrassing to say it myself, but he’s similar to Ahn Jung-won, who is affectionate and gentle.”


Reporter Lee Jeong-yeon annjoy@donga.com