[Stars up close] Why Park Jeong-min is going viral as Korea’s most down-to-earth star

At last week’s Blue Dragon Film Awards, Park Jeong-min walked away empty-handed despite dual nominations for best actor and best supporting actor. It was a disappointing outcome, as many had expected him to take home at least one trophy after delivering standout work as both father and son in Yeon Sang-ho’s experimental thriller “The Ugly” and as freedom fighter Woo Deok-sun in the period epic “Harbin.”

Rather than sulking, Park bounded onto the stage to join singer Hwasa for a performance of “Good Goodbye”— recreating scenes from her music video in which he’d starred — before shouting “Take the shoes!” as she made her exit. Within hours, social media had crowned him “No-Trophy Park,” a joking term of endearment that somehow felt like the night’s real prize.

This is the curious case of Park Jeong-min. Unlike most leading men who maintain a carefully cultivated mystique, the 38-year-old actor has for some time been a cult figure among Korea’s younger, predominantly male, terminally online crowd — as much through his acclaimed filmography as through gaming streams, self-deprecating humor and a seemingly allergic reaction to celebrity pretense.

The long road
Park didn’t exactly take the direct route to stardom. He enrolled at Korea University — one of the country’s most prestigious colleges — only to drop out and pivot toward filmmaking at Korea National University of Arts. He eventually switched majors to acting, a move nearly unprecedented in the school’s history.

Those early years were a grind. “There was a time when I had little success while working as an actor for almost 10 years,” he told Yonhap News Agency in 2018. “I thought about doing something else, but nothing came to mind.” His 2011 debut in the indie drama “Bleak Night” earned critical notice but little else. For five years, Park scraped by on minor roles while contemplating whether to pack it in entirely.

The breakthrough came in 2016 with “Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet,” director Lee Joon-ik’s austere black-and-white biopic about Korean poet Yun Dong-ju under Japanese occupation. Park played Song Mong-gyu, the poet’s firebrand cousin and fellow resistance figure. The performance swept awards season, netting best new actor honors at both the Blue Dragon and Baeksang ceremonies.

“It’s such a precious piece of work to me,” Park said in a 2024 interview with film magazine Cine21. “Song Mong-gyu’s life was so fascinating in itself. I owe a lot to that.”

The chameleonic turn
What followed was a run of bold, genre-hopping choices across film and television. For 2018’s “Keys to the Heart,” Park portrayed a pianist with autism, reportedly practicing six hours daily for six months to execute the performances himself. Two years later, he took a turn as a transgender woman in the high-octane thriller “Deliver Us from Evil,” a role he prepared for with considerable research and evident sensitivity. That performance earned him best supporting actor at the Blue Dragons and Baeksangs in 2021.

On the small screen, he’s anchored Netflix’s “Hellbound” and starred opposite Blackpink’s Jisoo in Coupang Play’s zombie romance “Newtopia.”

While that versatility gets the industry accolades, what really stuck with fans is his naturalistic, grounded delivery — the lived-in quality that makes his characters feel like actual people. He’s shown an uncanny knack for portraying annoyance, in particular. YouTube compilations showcasing his “annoyed acting,” where he captures the small frustrations of everyday life with remarkable authenticity, have racked up millions of views. It’s a peculiar claim to fame, but nobody in Korean cinema does it better.

Beyond the screens
Writing and publishing have long been in the mix for Park. His 2016 essay collection “A Useful Person” became a bestseller, and in 2020, he founded Muze, a publishing house focused on marginalized voices. Last year, he announced he was taking a year off from film work to run the operation full-time.

One project in particular hits close to home. After his father went legally blind from a degenerative eye condition, Park launched an audiobook initiative featuring full dramatic casts, sound design and original music, distributed first to libraries for the visually impaired before hitting commercial platforms.

“It was disheartening that I couldn’t show [my dad] the book,” he said at a book talk in April. “That’s how the idea of an audiobook project came about.”

The streamer’s star
Then there’s the gaming — the thing that really cemented his cult status across Korea’s online forums and bulletin boards. Park has become a fixture in the country’s streaming scene, hanging out with popular YouTubers, playing League of Legends (poorly, by all accounts) and generally treating the internet like one big group chat.

He’s a regular on the channel of “Chim Chak Man,” a webtoon artist turned streamer with over a million subscribers, and has joined a loose collective of content creators who game and banter together on air. Away from the pressures of set, Park comes across as the goofy, unguarded friend — the guy who’s not particularly good at gaming but shows up anyway, spawning affectionate nicknames and endless memes along the way. After last year’s Blue Dragons, he reportedly ditched the festival’s after-party to compete in a streamers’ Pokémon card tournament (He attended after losing in the semifinals).

It’s a rather unusual look for an actor widely considered one of the most versatile talents of his generation. But Park seems just as happy goofing around with his online crew as working the industry circuit.

“If I had to give up having fun because of my job,” he said during a late 2024 broadcast, “I’d rather give up being an actor.”

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