Park Hae-soo

Some Lesser Known Facts About Park Hae-soo

• Park Hae-soo is a South Korean actor. He is popular for his portrayal of ‘Kim Je-hyuk’ and  ‘Cho Sang-woo’ in the South Korean television series Prison Playbook (2017–2018) and Squid Game (2021), respectively.

• In 2007, he appeared in the theater play ‘Annapurna’ (2007), and he acted in his first musical ‘Puberty’ as ‘Yeongmin’ in 2008.

• Between 2009 and 2011, he appeared in the play ‘Hero’ in which he played the role of ‘Choi Jae-hyung.’

• Other theater plays in which Hae-soo has appeared are 39 steps (2009), A Streetcar Named Desire (2010), Seagull (2011), Macbeth (2014), Frankenstein (2014), Judo Boy (2015), and Male Impulse (2017).

• He has also appeared in the musicals Three Thousand – Flower of Destruction (2012), God is watching (2013), The Chorus – Oedipus (2013), and Asteroid B612 (2015).

• In 2013, Park Hae-soo was seen in the South Korean drama ‘Me and Mom and Dad and Grandma and Anna’ in the role of ‘Appa’ (father).

  

• Between 2015 and 2016, he appeared in the SBS drama ‘Six Flying Dragons’ in which he was seen playing the historical figure ‘Yi Ji-ran,’ the founder of Chonghae Yi Clan of the Joseon Dynasty. Six Flying Dragons is the story of the founding of the Joseon Dynasty and the historical figures in the Joseon Era, with a focus on ‘Yi Bang-won,’ the third Joseon king, Taejong of Joseon.

  

• He was then seen as ‘Hong Dong-pyo’ in the superhit SBS Kdrama ‘Legend of the Blue Sea’ (2016), which tells the story of love and rebirth of the mermaid Shim Cheong (played by South Korean actress Jun Ji-hyun) and human Heo Joon-jae (played by South Korean actor Lee Min-ho) in connection to the parallel past of their Joseon-era incarnations.

  

• In 2017, he met a South Korean woman through an acquaintance, and they began dating. He married the same woman (a non-celebrity), six years younger his age, in a private ceremony after a year of dating. Lee Ki-seop, an old friend of Hae-soo and a musical artist, was their wedding moderator.

  

• He then acted in the tvN Kdrama ‘Prison Playbook’ (2017-18) in which he played his first lead role as ‘Kim Je-hyuk.’ The drama focuses on the lives of the behind-bar convicts, families of those convicts, and the duty officers working in correctional facilities. In the drama, Kim Je-hyuk is a superstar baseball player who is put behind bars for assault after saving his sister from a sexual assault.

  

• After playing minor roles in the South Korean films Minority Opinion (2015) and Master (2016), he played his first lead role (in a film) of ‘Lee Chan-woo’ in the South Korean film ‘By Quantum Physics: A Nightlife Venture.’ The film was directed and written by South Korean filmmaker Lee Seong-tae, and it chronicles the battle of Lee Chan-woo (a nightclub owner), Sung Eun-young (nightclub manager), and Park ki-hum (police officer) against organized crime (like alleged drug abuse, sex crimes, and police corruption) in South Korea.

  

• In 2019, he made an appearance in the segment ‘Collector’ of the anthology television series ‘Persona.’ The segment was directed and written by Yim Pil-sung. In the segment, he was seen in the lead role of ‘Baek Jeong-u.’

  

• Park Hae-soo also played cameo roles in the Kdramas The Liar and His Lover (2017), Memories of the Alhambra (2018), and Racket Boys (2021).

•  He played main roles in the South Korean films Time to Hunt (2020) and Yacha (2021).

• In 2021, he portrayed ‘Cho Sang-woo’ (numbered 218) in the Netflix survival drama TV series ‘Squid Game,’ which was created, written, and directed by South Korean filmmaker Hwang Dong-hyuk. In the series, Cho Sang-woo, the former head of an investment team at a securities company and Gi-hun’s (Lee Jung-jae) classmate, is being searched by the police for not paying massive investment debts and stealing money from his clients. To make things right, he enters the Squid Game, consisting of children’s games with the death penalty for the losers, to win prize money of ₩45.6 billion. Other main roles in the series were played by Lee Jung-jae, Wi Ha-joon, Jung Ho-yeon, O Yeong-su, Heo Sung-tae, Anupam Tripathi, and Kim Joo-ryoung. The series was streamed on and distributed by Netflix worldwide, and it became the first Korean drama to peak at number one on Netflix’s top ten weekly most-watched TV show charts globally. Within the first 28 days of its availability, the series garnered 111 million viewers worldwide, becoming Netflix’s most-watched series at its launch.

  

• He went on to appear in lead roles in various Kdramas like Chimera (2021) as ‘Cha Jae-Hwan’ and Money Heist (2022) as ‘Berlin.’

• He was once the ambassador of the Seoul International Love Film Festival (Seoul Christian Film Festival).

• After he appeared in the 2021 Kdrama Squid Game, several reports stated that he had gone through a hair transplant or wore a wig. His pictures from the past, which showed his sparse hair in the front, began circulating on the media outlets. This led to theories of him experiencing hair loss and then going through hair treatments before shooting for ‘Prison Playbook.’

  

• Being a religious person, Park Hae-soo has a bible study group with musical actors.

• When Park Hae-soo was asked in an interview as to when he was convicted about acting being the right profession for him, Hae-soo replied that a high school student began crying while watching him perform in the play ‘Puberty.’ Hae-soo was moved to tears noticing the student, and he got off the stage to the student and hugged him. The student’s friend told Hae-soo,
  

  I thought I wanted to end my life, but when I saw the performance, that feeling disappeared.”

  Witnessing all of this, Hae-soo felt assured about remaining an actor.

• Park Hae-soo and South Korean actress Choo Ja-hyun are good friends.

  

• In an interview, Hae-soo revealed that he bore jealousy towards the South Korean actor Park Ho-san, who had worked with him earlier in the theater play ‘Seagull’ and then in the TV series Prison Playbook (2017). Explaining himself, Hae-soo said that while he played ‘Treplef’ (a rookie writer) in Seagull, Ho-san played ‘Tri Gorin’ (a genius writer). He said,
  

  It’s about a genius writer and a new writer, but I just didn’t want to see him. I just didn’t want to see him. He changed the long monologues written by the best writer Anton Chekhov to his taste. But that’s right. I was jealous.”

  Later, he said that he no longer felt that way now.