EDITOR’S NOTE: This story relies on an interview Daniel Dae Kim carried out with Lee Byung-hun for Ok-Everything, a NCS Original Series hosted by Kim exploring the global affect of South Korean tradition.
Lee Byung-hun’s physique was in a resort in Seoul, however his thoughts was someplace over the Pacific.
The actor had been hopping across the planet on promotional duties for a few yr — first for “Squid Game,” then global phenomenon “KPop Demon Hunters,” then awards season contender “No Other Choice” — bouncing between South Korea, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, London, and Venice. He was horribly jetlagged, he confessed to actor Daniel Dae Kim, host of the upcoming NCS Original Series “K-Everything,” late one December night.
Lee hadn’t adopted the recommendation of business pals, who’d informed him to relaxation earlier than the publicity push. “I’m having a hard time now,” he mentioned. “But mentally, I’m so happy.”
First-time Golden Globe nominee Lee has observe working on fumes. As a younger actor in Nineteen Nineties South Korea, he’d generally be awake for days on units with a dim view on fastened working hours. (One time, on his third day with out relaxation, Lee was prepared for his close-up. “The director called action and … I fell asleep,” he recalled.) The 55-year-old shouldn’t be about to decelerate as he conquers Hollywood for a second time — this time in his personal language and on his personal phrases.
Lee by no means supposed to turn out to be an actor. He was a university freshman finding out French literature in 1991 when his mom’s good friend slipped him an audition flyer as a joke. “People were so much more conservative than now,” he mentioned, and performing “was not a respected profession.” He went and caught the bug.
Lee says his mother and father had been open minded as he booked jobs on TV collection (notably pupil drama “Tomorrow Love”), earlier than he began taking roles in movies. His massive break got here in 2000 with thriller “Joint Security Area.” Lee performed a South Korean soldier accused of gunning down North Korean troops within the Demilitarized Zone. Directed by Park Chan-wook, the huge important and business hit paired knotty morals with operatic violence, providing a blueprint for a era of Korean filmmakers (together with Bong Joon Ho and Kim Jee-woon).
In 2005, Lee was on the Cannes Film Festival when an agent provided to crack open the door on Hollywood. He accepted, and 4 years later Lee made his English-language debut in “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.”
“Acting in English,” he recalled, “felt like I was swimming in the middle of the ocean without knowing the direction.”
“If someone pointed out to me some pronunciation or intonation (or) accent, then it was in my head,” he mentioned. “I’ve gotten a little more comfortable with that. Back then, if someone suddenly pointed something out to me, or if something kept bothering me, I’d be so preoccupied with it that I couldn’t do anything else.”
If he had misgivings, casting administrators didn’t. A “G.I. Joe” sequel adopted, then roles in “Terminator Genisys” (2015), Antoine Fuqua’s remake of “The Magnificent Seven” (2016) and extra.
In the area of some years, Lee shared the display screen with all-time greats Al Pacino, Denzel Washington, Anthony Hopkins, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ethan Hawke. He purchased a home in LA and bought a small vineyard in Mendoza, Argentina. But Lee by no means totally dedicated to Hollywood, persevering with to behave in Korean hits like “The Age of Shadows” (2016) and “Emergency Declaration” (2021).
He nonetheless has his LA residence, he mentioned, although “most of the time it’s empty.” This awards season, it could be a distinct story.
In the previous yr or so, Lee has skilled a profession 180: US audiences got here to him.
Last yr, the actor brutalized contestants because the Front Man in “Squid Game,” terrorized children because the voice of Gwi-Ma in “KPop Demon Hunters” and was cruel as a hapless killer in Oscar contender “No Other Choice.”
“Squid Game,” Hwang Dong-hyuk’s bloody satire of late capitalism, launched in 2021 and rapidly turned Netflix’s most popular show of all time. The streamer logged practically 600 million views of season one and two forward of its third and closing season final June, which was seen 60 million times in its first three days (one other Netflix report).
“It felt very weird,” Lee mentioned, “because I made Korean content with Korean actors and Korean staff and a Korean director, and it’s about Korean story based on Korean culture in the Korean language — and they react like that?”
He suggestions his cap to streaming providers as an business gamechanger: “as long as the content is good, then people all around the world will watch it.”
Last June, Netflix additionally launched the animated movie “KPop Demon Hunters” (a title that explains the plot). Two months later, it turned the streamer’s most popular movie of all time, leaping from dwelling rooms into theaters with over 1,000 offered out singalong screenings all over the world, and 4 songs inside the highest 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It’s very probably the popular culture sensation — which received two awards on the 2026 Golden Globes for finest animated movie and finest authentic track, “Golden” — will obtain a number of Oscar nominations.
A North American manufacturing in partnership with Sony Pictures Animation, the movie encompasses a voice solid stacked with members of the Korean diaspora (together with Daniel Dae Kim). Lee signed on as a result of he needed to make a movie his children might watch.
“I watched it with my 10-year-old boy,” he mentioned. “He asked me, ‘Are you the villain?’ I said yes. He said, ‘Again?!’ He was so disappointed.” (His two-year-old daughter hasn’t seen the film however her favourite track is, after all, “Golden.”)
One movie his youngsters received’t be watching any time quickly is “No Other Choice.”
Lee’s long-waited reunion with Park Chan-wook premiered on the Venice Film Festival in August and has been navigating the pageant circuit and award season machine ever since. It debuted in US cinemas on Christmas Day and enters extra theaters on January 16.
Based on American Donald Westlake’s novel “The Ax” — and beforehand made into French movie “Le couperet” by Costas-Gavras in 2005 — Park updates the story of an unemployed center supervisor who hatches a plan to kill his competitors as he tries to land a brand new job.
Lee mentioned Park first talked about the venture about 15 years in the past. It was deliberate with an American solid, earlier than Park exported it to Korea and tapped Lee to guide as paper producer Man-su.
“He thought that the story was going to be a very dark and tragic one, because it’s about a man who lost his job, but he found himself bursting out in laughter,” mentioned Park in a current interview with NCS.
“The first question he asked me after reading the screenplay was whether he read it correctly, and my response to him was, ‘the funnier the better.’”
Man-su is a hilariously horrible and terribly hilarious serial killer. He second-guesses his strategies, fails to execute plans and finally ends up sympathizing together with his victims (naturally, they’ve lots in frequent). And but, regardless of himself, he will get the job accomplished. Lee is taking part in in opposition to kind; his character is hardly villainous, as an alternative a bumbling sufferer of a chilly, uncaring system.
Park insisted to NCS that Man-su is the protagonist and automation is the true villain, dragging Westlake’s story into the current by making AI the final word bogeyman.
“Korea is a very competitive society; everyone is trying to survive,” mentioned Lee, although he acknowledged his nation’s scenario isn’t distinctive. “With the advent of AI, people will be thinking more deeply about this issue … It’s possible it could get even worse in the future.”
“No Other Choice” — ruthlessly incisive, unpredictable and rooted in cultural specificity — returns to the fundamental rules underpinning plenty of profitable Ok-content.
Both Lee and Park expressed that South Korea’s turbulent fashionable historical past — colonized by Japan from 1910 to 1945, the Korean War and subsequent navy dictatorships — has offered the nation with a novel power that has filtered into the humanities.
“The great influence that Korean culture has today is truly (a) gain that we’ve gotten through the pain that we’ve experienced in our history. So, I actually feel quite bitter about that,” mentioned the director.
Interestingly, Lee prompt the nation practically fumbled its hard-won cultural cache, in a inventive ebb alongside the Ok-wave.
“Twenty years ago, when the Korean wave was just starting in Asia … we started asking ourselves, ‘What will they want next?’” he mentioned of worldwide audiences. “Instead of sticking to what we had always done, we began to think more and more about what they want. And as we did that, over time the enthusiasm gradually cooled off.”
“We’ve already gone through a period of trial and error,” he added, “I think this time we need to create with those lessons in mind.”
The unapologetic, undiluted — and wildly fashionable — voice of the Ok-wave at the moment throughout movie, tv and music, speaks to a nation doubling down on itself. In 2020, “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho informed the world to recover from studying subtitles and received Best Picture on the Oscars a month later. “No Other Choice” and its star, each nominated for Golden Globes and within the dialog for others, is additional proof that generally the most effective path to tread is an unwavering one.
“We should continue to develop that same energy, the same method, the same storytelling,” Lee mentioned. “If we stubbornly continue to do what we do, we’ll eventually be able to maintain that ongoing interest.”
The NCS Original Series, Ok-Everything, hosted by Kim will launch on NCS International and stream on HBO MAX coming this spring.