[Exclusive Interview] D-Day: Park Bo Gum and His Big Choices

So KoreanUpdates got our second chance to interview Park Bo Gum and this time instead of asking him through 3^rd party (read: internet connection), we got to ask him questions directly face-to-face. It was really a pressure to meet the humble young man and to get the chance to have a little (not) private talk with him. As he already shared stories about his wishes to us in our last interview, we talked about choices around his career this time.

KoreanUpdates and a lot of Jjangers are big fans of Reply 1988, so we couldn’t miss chance to talk about our beloved drama and Park Bo Gum’s character Choi Taek. Just like previous Reply series, one of the biggest charms (or maybe guilty pleasure) of the family dramas is the leading lady’s husband hunt. Along with the amount of love that the drama received from public, the debate regarding “who is the husband” grew bigger after each series which reflected in how big was the war between #TeamJunghwan and #TeamTaek last time. So we asked the young actor, who will he choose between Choi Taek and Jung Hwan, if he wasn’t playing one of them?

The answer was referred to the main object of the question itself, Deok Sun. Bo Gum said, if he was Deok Sun he definitely will choose someone who can express his love and show his feelings to her. We will never know what will happen after in their life, but if he was Deok Sun, even though Jung Hwan is good too, he will choose someone who directly express his love. As a viewer, he found both characters have their own charms and thought for sure that Jung Hwan would be the husband at first. He revealed that when they were filming the drama and receiving the scripts, the real husband was kept as secret and no one knew until they received the last script.

He looked genuinely surprised that we watched the drama even though he saw on the TV (after he arrived in Indonesia) that Reply 1988 will only be aired now in Indonesia. He then asked us how we usually watch Korean dramas here which we delightfully answered with a clear “streaming!” one. We were silently screaming inside when he remembers that we said we watch I Remember You and he said that he was really surprised and thankful knowing that we, who are from Indonesia, watch that drama too. It feels amazing for him knowing there are people who watch his dramas as he never done any official activity in Indonesia before.

After that we told Bo Gum to imagine being in the same situation as Choi Taek, Deok Sun, and Jung Hwan where his best friend loves the same girl with him and asked him what he will do and who will he choose between friend and love. The actor confidently said if that will ever happened to him, he will tell his friend clearly about his feelings. Imagining girl who he loves standing beside his best friend on the wedding altar is hurtful enough to make him choose love over friendship in this situation and wrapped up the imagination by cheerfully saying that we have to fight for our love.

The Reply 1988 talk was put aside and we asked Bo Gum about of another favorite project of him, working as an MC. Bo Gum might became really popular thanks to Reply and Moonlight, but his name actually starting to become more well known to public due to his incredible performance as Music Bank MC. So we asked him what kind of program he want to host if he were offered an MC role again. Another chance to lead Music Bank is also a nice option for him, but being a Radio DJ is actually his current dream right now should he has the chance to become MC again.

Being a Radio DJ means he can interact with people through radio messages as well as working while listening and playing healing music, and those make it appealing to become one. As an actor, aside from fan meeting he doesn’t get a lot of time to meet his fans, so he hopes if he became Radio DJ later he can interact more with his fans.

The last choice we talked about was regarding his “singer vs actor” career. It was revealed that Park Bo Gum originally was planned to debut as singer, but then debut as an actor instead which was why we asked him what made him choose the latter in the end. He told us his current management is who made his dream to become actor bigger. He thought that if he becomes an actor he can get a lot of experiences and try a lot of things that he could only imagine if he wasn’t one.

As an actor, he said, he has to keep learning, like for example: for Moonlight he had to learn how to ride a horse, how to play Geomungo (W/N: Korean traditional stringed music instrument, a zither), how to do action scenes, and he also felt happy because he had the chance to wear a lot of beautiful Hanbok (W/N: Korean traditional costume) unlike daily. He also added how he had the chance to learn how to play Baduk (W/N: Korean chess) thanks to his role in Reply 1988. The charm of the experiences that he can get as an actor lured him to choose to become one instead debuting as singer. No worries, because he still can let us hear his beautiful voice through drama’s OSTs.

We unfortunately had to finished the interview, nonetheless we had a great time talking with the humble actor. Just as he hopes he can go back to Indonesia again, we also hope we can meet him again and talk about other things with his (surely) grown number of projects. Until then, thank you so much!

P.S. Bigger than big thank you to our partner, Mecima Pro for this lovely chance! We couldn’t do this without you J