[Kim Ji-yeon’s Jewelry Box] How to Become a Landlord in South Korea — Park Seo-kyeong

“Capable and lively” fits him. A 2009-born “breakout” actor who feels like he’s growing every day, and a child actor whose future is genuinely exciting. I’m curious about Park Seo-kyeong’s future because you can already see—right from the roles he’s built through his filmography—that he has the kind of potential that won’t just stop at “promising.”

Park Seo-kyeong started acting around age 10, and he’s consistently been described as “the child actor of a famous actor,” or “Little 000.” That’s because in the drama 〈Secret Boutique〉 (2019), he played Kim Sun-a’s younger version; in the film 〈Josee〉 (2020), he played Han Ji-min’s younger version; in the drama 〈Good Man〉 (2025), he played Lee Sung-kyung’s younger version; and in 〈The Day Eunsoo Is Good〉 (2025), he played Lee Young-ae’s younger version.

Once he moved beyond roles where he only played someone else’s childhood, Park Seo-kyeong’s latest filmography started to feel more layered and three-dimensional. For instance, in 2023, with 〈Heatwave Warning〉—a KBS Drama Special—he landed his first leading role. Set inside a story steeped in the sound of crickets and in nostalgia, he and another rising child actor, Moon Woo-jin, built a straightforward romance. “His midsummer” is the kind of “typical teenage student” anyone would recognize: worrying about his bangs, bickering with a classmate who likes him, and carrying at least one secret he doesn’t want anyone to know. Thanks to Park Seo-kyeong’s portrayal of that age-appropriate sharpness and awkward freshness—no exaggeration—〈Heatwave Warning〉 managed to stir up something warm in each viewer, like the middle-school memories they didn’t realize they were holding onto. Park Seo-kyeong even learned the local dialect on-site to match Daegu in 2002, and he decided the direction of the character himself before filming. In that sense, through this role, he pulled off a strong leading debut—this time not as “the child actor of a famous actor,” but as “Park Seo-kyeong.”

Then Park Seo-kyeong starts to make his presence felt in earnest through the Netflix series 〈You and Everything Else〉. Sure, he plays the younger version of actor Park Ji-hyun’s character in 〈You and Everything Else〉, but he’s done too much to be reduced to “someone’s child actor.” The childhood of Sang-yeon that Park Seo-kyeong portrays carries a kind of complexity that you’d usually expect from adult characters. When productions use child actors, the child role is often treated like a prop—someone’s “daughter”—or a stand-in for pure, harmless childhood curiosity. But in 〈You and Everything Else〉, the scenes involving the child actors break away from that pattern. In 〈You and Everything Else〉, the childhood scenes of Eun-jung and Sang-yeon aren’t just “flashbacks.” Child actors are typically used briefly to support the adult protagonist’s backstory. However, in a drama that tracks “Eun-jung” and “Sang-yeon” from their teens into their 40s, the younger Eun-jung (Do-young-seo) and younger Sang-yeon (Park Seo-kyeong) are the main leads carrying the narrative from 1992 to 1996. Young Cheon-sang-yeon is someone Ryu Eun-jung admires—yet she also feels inferior and envious. Young Cheon-sang-yeon even slaps Ryu Eun-jung’s palm, becomes close friends with Eun-jung as they rise together on a talent show stage, and later vents her twisted feelings after realizing Eun-jung’s mother and older brother are closer to her than she thought. The reason the complex deprivation of adult Cheon-sang-yeon (Park Ji-hyun) felt so understandable was that it was rooted in what young Cheon-sang-yeon had already built—portrayed by Park Seo-kyeong.

So what about Park Seo-kyeong’s appearance in the currently airing tvN drama 〈Mad Concrete Dreams〉 (hereafter 〈Landlord〉)? In this darkly comedic world where countless villains spill out their greed through warped methods driven by their own desires, Ki-dara—played by Park Seo-kyeong—is the only one who genuinely gives the audience some breathing room. Of course, it’s still “pretty much a gold mine.” Ki-dara is the only daughter that Ki-soo-jong (Ha Jung-woo) and Kim Sun (Im Soo-jung) spoil. She has congenital hearing loss, so she uses sign language, and she’s a third-year high school student who got into Harvard. While Ki-soo-jong and Kim Sun do everything they can—committing a wide variety of crimes and evil deeds, in a sense, just so they won’t interfere with their daughter’s path toward studying abroad—Ki-dara stays at the center of this swirling vortex of trouble. With 〈Landlord〉 having only four episodes left, how far can Ki-dara’s desires go—before everything spills out? In this play where you end up staring at the absurdity of lines like “If you get stabbed once, you’re locked up for two days; and if it’s a billion, it’s basically a jackpot,” will Ki-dara truly stay on the side of the “good people” all the way to the end? Thanks to the wide range of roles Park Seo-kyeong has shown, I’m confident 〈Landlord〉 won’t flatten Ki-dara into a one-note character. I’m looking forward to the complicated, multi-layered side of Ki-dara—one he’ll keep bringing to life right up until the final moments.