[Kim Ji-yeon’s Jewel Box] From raw terror to weighty warmth, Kim Young-sung of 〈Gyeongju Trip〉, 〈Salmokji〉 and 〈Big Sleep〉

Do you remember the character who complained the whole time and was the first to be found cold and dead in one of the standout horror films of the first half of the year, 〈Salmokji〉 (2025)? Song Kyung-tae, the representative of a veteran Road View filming company, played by Kim Young-sung, is suddenly stuck with a job he hates. Called in on a holiday to fix a Road View defect, he heads to a reservoir determined to finish the work as sloppily and quickly as possible so he can go fishing. He doesn’t believe rumors about ghosts or strange shapes. But isn’t it a horror-movie rule that the person who refuses to believe in ghosts is the first to die? His bluster dissolves—after being lured by an unseen presence into the water, his thin posturing vanishes and he trembles, overwhelmed by the terror suddenly in front of him.

Kyung-tae functions like a guide leading the audience into the fear of 〈Salmokji〉. Before confirming the nature of the entity, he embodies the feelings of viewers who want to test whether the film’s reputation for being scary is really true. Some audience members likely sat in the theater half-believing the rumors that the movie was terrifying; others, like Kyung-tae, probably didn’t believe the scary talk at all. That is why the discovery of Kyung-tae’s grotesque corpse, eyes still open, could function as one of 〈Salmokji〉’s most powerful jump-scare scenes.

Kim Young-sung, who plays Kyung-tae, strips away the shell of swagger and bravado to physically render a human’s raw, fragile instincts. Kim Young-sung said he wanted "audiences to feel like they were entering Salmokji alongside the camera when Kyung-tae carries it and shoots the Road View," and he described that as a focus of his performance in 〈Salmokji〉.

Despite appearing to do everything "sloppily," Kim Young-sung’s casual performance as Kyung-tae is anything but accidental. Kim Young-sung is an actor who rose in the film world with the indie 〈Big Sleep〉 (2022), sweeping the Actor of the Year award at the Busan International Film Festival, the Best Actor prize at the Wildflower Film Awards, the Best New Actor award at the Buil Film Awards, and the Best New Male Actor prize from the Busan Film Critics Association.

Like Kyung-tae in 〈Salmokji〉, Gi-young in 〈Big Sleep〉 feels startlingly real. Gi-young redefines what it means to be a "kind adult." He casually asks runaway teenager Gil-ho (Choi Jun-woo), "Hey, did you eat?" while setting him up with a blanket and a place to sleep, then tosses him some cash with a brusque, "Eat it or don’t, and don’t come back." At one point he even tells Gil-ho, "I ran away from home when I was young too." He dimly recognizes the boy’s situation but does not posture as a sentimental savior; he doesn’t perform warmth to prove he’s soft inside. That restraint is precisely why Gi-young’s tsundere-like character never feels greasy or corny. With a weary but weighty expression and gestures he conveys that he, too, gets through each day dragging his own scars and circumstances behind him.

There is a chillingly vivid sense of lived reality in the way he calmly smokes in front of the plant his mother left behind. Director Kim Tae-hoon recalled the audition in a 2023 interview with CinePLAY, describing a memorable first meeting: Kim Young-sung auditioned lying down while Travel Sketch’s "The Stars Are Falling" played in the room. Kim Tae-hoon said he saw Gi-young in that moment and felt certain he could make the film with him through conversation and collaboration.

Kim Young-sung also appears in 〈Gyeongju Trip〉, which opens today (the 26th). He plays Jang-ju’s (Gong Hyo-jin) husband — the only male member of the four-woman mother-and-daughter team and the variable in their plan to kill. In this road movie that alternates between realistic character study and surreal events like a roller coaster, the very ordinary husband Kim plays may be the most fantastical figure of all: when his wife suggests they kill someone, he tells her he will help without complaint.

In the black-comedy-tinged 〈Gyeongju Trip〉, Kim Young-sung anchors the film’s comic axis, preventing its tone from tilting entirely toward solemnity or heaviness. Moving freely between commercial films and indie projects, between genre pieces and black comedy, Kim doesn’t pose or affect style. Instead, he draws out the lived-in reality and unvarnished edges of his characters, whether conveying raw fear, the weighty warmth of a grown-up, or a deft supporting turn that functions as the film’s flavorful seasoning. That, perhaps, is his strength.