Quotes

Western ghosts are evil, but Korean ghosts are about making peace. That is part of our Korean psyche.

[on working with Luc Besson] I was on vacation and I suddenly receive a call saying Luc Besson was looking for me. When I was a young actor, I was watching some Luc Besson movies and they were always a great inspiration for me, and so I thought, OK, so now that I'm an actor for so many years, finally I meet this great director.

I don't know about other people but I've never been concerned about what I would seem like to the public. I just go with whatever suits my taste. If that's what I'd been worried about, how could I have taken on I Saw the Devil (2010) in the first place? My criterion for choosing a project is whether the world inside the project is interesting to me.

I really like epics although not a lot of them are made these days. Movies that you can just sit through instead of having to lean your body forward and tense up for. Movies that you can put food next to you to eat while watching and go back to after a phone call. Actors don't feel any pressure from the fact that those movies are long and have long-standing stories. It rather makes us want to go for them.

When I did I Saw the Devil (2010), I gagged over fake blood although I knew it was fake because it felt like it smelled real. I was extremely stressed from the pressure from the situation, pressure from the story's setup, pressure from the character, and pressure from what he does.

Given the growing popularity of Korean dramas and films, many Korean actors are receiving global recognition at international award ceremonies and film festivals. And they are shining brightly without trembling with excitement or being nervous. I couldn't do that when I received unexpected attention from overseas audiences in the past.

The violence in I Saw the Devil (2010) grows to such an extreme that it almost becomes comedic, in a sense, and objectively watching it you can see members of the audience laughing because they realize it's so outrageous and I wanted to look at that contamination of violence and violation that takes place. I also wanted to share society being rather overwhelmed with act of violence in the world we live in now, and share the terror and feelings of fear that come with that.

If you look at actors and actresses in terms of their job and the relationship between actors and the public in modern society, equally as people in other jobs such as singers or dancers, I think they become very important mediums of communication with the public.

It's important that you pick up special experiences from daily life but so is being able to feel emotions from small occurrences and having a good sense of what's going on although it's very hard to do.

I personally believe that the public's preference is very fickle, so the trends change very quickly. But we cannot work in this business if we ignore viewers' opinions and do what we want. I feel that mutual communication is the most crucial thing for actors.

The aim of a sports game is to score a goal but not everybody can run towards it. Someone needs to be ready to receive a pass that someone else dribbles. And that's the basics, as well as most difficult thing about acting. When I acted on stage, I was told over and over again, "Listen to what your partner is saying. Don't move forward by yourself." There are so many actors that talk to themselves and become conscious of the camera once they go into shoot.

Being a director brings a lot of headaches. What I'm doing now as an actor is overwhelming enough so looking into becoming a director is not for now, but maybe someday.