Profile | Who is Park Hyung-sik, star of K-dramas Our Blooming Youth and Happiness, and K-pop singer? How he always helps his female co-stars shine
- The actor began his entertainment career as a member of K-pop boy band ZE:A before launching his screen career in high-school drama The Heirs
- Parts in K-dramas Strong Girl Bong Soon and Happiness followed, then Our Blooming Youth. In all three, his character is in the shadow of strong women
It may seem unusual to say someone has quietly worked their way up the entertainment profession when they have 10 million followers on Instagram, but it is true of the 13-year career of Park Hyung-sik, currently on screens in Our Blooming Youth.
A native of Yongin in Gyeonggi, the province surrounding Seoul, Park showed an interest in singing at a young age and, after being noticed by talent scouts, he began training to be a pop idol.
He trained throughout his high-school years and debuted at the age of 18 in the nine-member K-pop boy band ZE:A in 2010, alongside Im Si-wan.
Park had a few cameo roles on TV early on, but his first real acting challenge came in 2011, when he featured in the stage musical Temptation of Wolves alongside Ryeowook of K-pop act Super Junior.
His first screen role beyond a cameo came in 2012 in the two-part SBS show I Remember You, and he has not looked back since, appearing in new drama series every year (save for when he did his military service, compulsory in South Korea, in 2019-2020), as well as half a dozen stage productions and an award-winning film.
Why we love him
In his current series Our Blooming Youth, Park plays a tormented and dashing Crown Prince, but he shares the screen with a female character, played by Jeon So-nee, who takes charge.
It’s far from the first time Park has played alongside strong female leads and this strikes us as one of his stand-out attributes.
He is not afraid to take roles in shows where powerful women characters kick ass. It’s as if he knows that sharing the limelight with such female co-stars allows each of them to shine a little brighter.
Our Blooming Youth: period K-drama with refreshing gender roles
Park generally doesn’t showboat on screen, always playing reserved characters who win us over with their stolid attributes. He’s a dependable rock in the sometimes chaotic seas of K-drama stories.
The star-making roles
After several small roles, Park joined the cast of youth drama The Heirs, which would become one of the top shows of 2013.
The show assembled an array of talent. Some cast members were already big names, others on the cusp of becoming stars, including Lee Min-ho, Park Shin-hye, Kim Woo-bin, Krystal Jung, Kim Ji-won and Kang Ha-neul.
Park managed to cement his place among that intimidating line-up as Jo Myung-soo, the son of the chief executive of a major law film.
Among the high-society high-schoolers that populate the show’s narrative, Myung-soo is the joker who provides comic relief.
He stayed in the ranks of the privileged and moved up to the main cast in High Society, once again playing a corporate heir. He then donned a long wig in period drama Hwarang: The Poet Warrior Youth, playing a king who secretly joins a group of elite young men.
The iconic parts
Park’s biggest roles were still to come. In 2017 he starred in the JTBC show Strong Girl Bong-soon, which became one of the most popular cable-television series of all time in South Korea.
He once again plays an heir, this time Ahn Min-hyuk, who runs a gaming company. Amid a flurry of high-profile kidnapping cases, Min-hyuk is assigned a bodyguard, Park Bo-young’s super-powered “Strong Girl” Bong-soon.
This is where Park’s compelling streak of playing alongside strong female leads began.
In his last role before entering the military, Park played alongside Jang Dong-gun in Suits, the KBS remake of the American show of the same name. He appears as the genius legal mind Go Yeon-woo, who possesses an extraordinary memory.
In a dystopia populated by zombies he plays detective Jung Yi-hyun, who moves into a new apartment with Han’s fellow cop. The building is soon put under lockdown when a mysterious infection causes residents to become violent.
The unheralded performance
Away from his TV drama successes, Park quietly made his big-screen debut in the legal drama Juror 8 in 2019.
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Park plays the titular character, the youngest juror in South Korea’s first trial by jury. As the most inquisitive member of the panel, he challenges fellow jurors as well as the judge, played by acclaimed screen actress Moon So-ri.
He more than holds his own against his seasoned co-stars, and earned high praise for his performance. Park won the best new actor prize in the 39th Korean Association of Film Critics Awards as well as nominations in the same category for the 40th Blue Dragon Film Awards and 56th Baeksang Arts Awards.
Park reportedly did 27 different readings for his important first line of dialogue in the film.
Tomorrow’s turns
Park will be on screens until early April in Our Blooming Youth but, as yet, has no confirmed follow-up project. Some of us at least will be keeping our fingers crossed for a second season of Happiness.
