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Park Min-young on career and marriage: Everyone’s choices should be respected
South Korean actor Park Min-young talks about her career choices, her filmography, doing romcoms and her idea of marriage
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The queen of rom-coms, Park Min-young, has built a filmography playing women with agency over her two-decade-long career. However, she reveals that this was not always the case.
“When I first debuted, it was quite hard to find roles where the female characters were driven and had that much agency. I was quite hungry for those parts and roles. When I finally got to play a role like that, it felt like a sense of responsibility to make sure that it would be a success, so that other similar shows and parts could follow. I think I chose roles a couple of times in the beginning and then ended up getting more offers for those roles. So I guess that just naturally happened,” she tells HT City in an exclusive interview.
Forty-year-old Park Min-young, whose acting credits span genres, with hits such as What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim, Marry My Husband, and Siren’s Kiss, is a familiar face in workplace dramas. The actor returns to screens with the office romance Nine to Six, which premieres on Prime Video. An adaptation of the 2021 Chinese hit The Rational Life, the series sees her play Kang Yi-ji, a workaholic deputy manager who has carved out a space for herself in a male-dominated world, choosing to put her love life on the back burner.
“I always take a new approach. I try to become the person in terms of her appearance and explore her inner world. For Yi-ji, I put together a look that was effortless, with hair and a wardrobe that were practical and wearable. But most importantly, relating to the character is paramount, even before one starts performing and living the character. I’m naturally drawn to characters I can relate to and believe in. One truly needs to understand the person, their situation and their reactions to play them. I thought that, for me at this point in my life, it was very appropriate to play Yi-ji.”
Into Kang Ji Yi’s life comes Han Sun Woo (BTOB’s Yook Sung-jae) a younger man with a warm personality, who gradually breaks down her walls and draws her into an unexpected connection.
Even as her on-screen character exudes cynicism about love, the actor reflects on changing attitudes towards relationships, ambition and marriage.
“Whenever I talk to my friends of the same age Generation M as we are called, they are very different from Generation Z. We are very focused on our careers, and if we get married, there are a lot of opportunities we could get, but seriously, you can just leave it there. For a woman, having a child is a whole new stage. So I think everyone has a different perspective, and we have to respect their thoughts. As for me, I chose the other way. I really love my acting career, and I chose this path. But I think everyone’s choices should be respected for whatever they are ,” she says in fluent English. Nine to Six premieres on Prime Video on November 25.
