Film 'HUMINT' Park Jung-min: "Wouldn’t It Be Weird If I Tried to Be Chow Yun-fat With This Face?" [Interview]

[Financial News] Park Chan-wook, Lee Joon-ik, Ryoo Seung-wan, Yeon Sang-ho, Woo Min-ho and other star directors of Chungmuro keep calling on him, yet actor Park Jung-min remains unfailingly modest. At times, he even seems to underestimate himself.
He is not the typical handsome leading man, but over the past few months he has earned the label of a "national boyfriend." Many women fell for the way he acts with his eyes after watching singer Hwasa’s "Good Goodbye" performance.
Against this backdrop, the film "HUMINT" opened on the 11th. This classic spy action movie has drawn attention not only for Zo In-sung’s action scenes but also for Park Jung-min’s romantic acting. Park, however, said he had neither expected nor wanted to do romance in the first place.

Ryoo Seung-wan’s new film "HUMINT" is set in Vladivostok, Russia, and pits the stories of North and South Korean intelligence agents against high-intensity action.
Section Chief Zo (Zo In-sung) of the National Intelligence Service, Park Geon (Park Jung-min), a section chief in North Korea’s Ministry of State Security, and Chae Sun-hwa (Shin Se-kyung), a North Korean woman who becomes Zo’s asset, each fight their own battles against a human trafficking ring. Park Jung-min plays Park Geon, a man of strict principles who is shaken when he reunites with a former lover.
Meeting him at a café in Samcheong-dong in Seoul ahead of the release, Park Jung-min said, "At first I thought I was signing on to an action movie. But midway through the shoot, when we filmed the scene where Park Geon watches a video of Sun-hwa singing by the window on his phone, I started to feel like this might actually be a romance."
Asked whether he had ever longed to do romantic roles, he answered, "Not at all." He went on, "I was worried people might have an allergic reaction. Whenever I heard, 'I’m curious about Park Jung-min in a romance,' I thought, who would possibly be curious about me doing romance?" He added, "I was afraid I might just come off as creepy."
In this film, he never once holds the hand of the woman he loves so deeply. He conveys all the aching emotion only through his actions and his eyes. On this, he recalled, "During rehearsal I tried walking up to Shin Se-kyung and taking her hand, but it felt awkward so I gave up. I thought Park Geon was the kind of person who would just stand there in that moment."
"He’s someone who is loyal to the state, so duty comes before feelings. But when he meets Sun-hwa again, the convictions he’s always lived by start to crumble. I saw it as the first real conflict in the life of a man who has never known inner turmoil before—that’s Park Geon’s loneliness."

Known as a cinephile, director Ryoo gave Park Jung-min a wide range of reference films before shooting. They spanned everything from the James Bond film series and adaptations of John le Carré novels to classic Hong Kong noir.
Park said, "I thought of those men in films like 'A Better Tomorrow' and 'The Killer.' But the problem is, I’m not Chow Yun-fat. I figured it would look strange if I tried to be Chow Yun-fat with this face, so I was pretty confused," adding, "I only borrowed the mood from those films."
Even now, Park Jung-min hesitates to call "HUMINT" a romance film.
He explained, "I see it as a story about trying to save someone. After we finished shooting, the emotions deepened and it started to look more like a romance, but that was never the intention."
Speaking about his co-star Shin Se-kyung, he said she had been an actor who left a strong impression on him for a long time. "I remember watching a sitcom in the army and thinking she was really beautiful," he recalled, adding that even back when he dreamed of becoming a film director, she remained vivid in his mind.
On set, he found Shin Se-kyung’s singing scene particularly memorable. "The first time I heard it, I thought, 'Why is she such a good singer?' and it was fascinating to hear her sing in dialect as well," he said. After seeing the finished film, he added, "My heart really ached. If I had understood the emotion of that song better while we were filming, I think I would have acted with even more longing."
Park Jung-min’s candid, understated attitude continued throughout the interview.
When asked how much he resembles Park Geon, a man who would risk his life for love, he answered with a laugh.
"Park Geon can throw his life away for love... but I can’t."


jashin@fnnews.com Shin Jin-ah Reporter