Seo Hyun Jin And Kim Dong Wook Share Why They Chose Their New Drama, Thoughts On "Rom-Com Queen" Title, And More

Jul 05, 2021

On July 5, tvN’s new drama “You Are My Spring” held a press conference with writer Lee Mi Na, director Jung Ji Hyun, and cast members Seo Hyun Jin, Kim Dong Wook, Yoon Bak, and Nam Gyu Ri.

“You Are My Spring” is a new romance drama about a group of people living in a building where a murder previously took place. Although they are all fully grown adults, they still go about their lives with their seven-year-old selves in their hearts.

Screenwriter Lee Mi Na said, “Spring typically means something warm and healing, a season where things start anew. ‘You Are My Spring’ was inspired by the song title, but in the drama, it’s not that everything is a happy ending when spring comes around. We all know that spring comes and goes, and winter will always come, but I think that spring is always a source of hope when we can realize that we’ve grown a little bit as adults.”

Seo Hyun Jin plays Kang Da Jung, a hotel concierge manager who cannot forget the small inn that she stayed in as a young child. She said, “All the actors will probably agree, but I joined the project because of the script. The script was the first thing I read, and the story was good, so I decided to do it. At first, I was going back and forth on it. I wasn’t sure if it was quite good or not, but when I met with the director and writer, they were really persuasive. They persuaded me for about an hour and a half.” She joked, “I was caught into it.”

This is Seo Hyun Jin’s first “romance genre” drama since “Beauty Inside.” She said, “There’s a lot of pressure when people call you ‘the rom-com queen.’ But this one wasn’t exactly a romantic comedy, so I could let go of that pressure. There wasn’t anything specific I was concerned about. What is there to be concerned about when you’re working hard?”

Kim Dong Wook co-stars as Joo Young Do, a man who became a psychiatrist in order to help people find the will to live. He said, “I joined the drama late, but because it was on tvN, produced by Hwa&Dam, directed by Jung Ji Hyun, written by Lee Mi Na, and co-starring Seo Hyun Jin, I didn’t have to think about it before I signed up.”

About comparisons to his previous project, “Find Me in Your Memory,” he said, “At first, I was worried about that too. The mystery in that drama was about the connection between Lee Jung Hoon and the female lead, but in this drama, the mystery isn’t the focus itself so much as the emotional healing and love that Da Jung and my character go through together.”

Yoon Bak plays Chae Joon, the CEO of an investment company, who suddenly appears in front of Kang Da Jung and seems to know everything about her. The actor joked, “I also decided to appear because of Studio Dragon and Hwa&Dam. But I couldn’t forget that moment. When I first met the director, he didn’t say anything and just stared at me for a while. I decided to trust him and go ahead with it.”

He added, “The script was obviously good, but I also liked the director’s laugh. And before I debuted, I went to the same university as Kim Dong Wook. He was already a star then, and I was just a student. I think that’s when I started dreaming of becoming an actor. I always wanted to act in a project with him and 12 years later, my wish has come true. I still can’t believe it.”

Kim Dong Wook said, “This is embarrassing. Even at school, we drank together often and were friendly with each other. Even before we worked on this together, I considered him a close friend.”

Nam Gyu Ri plays Ahn Ga Young, an actress who is afraid to fall in love again after she was used by her ex-boyfriend, who was also her manager. Like the other actors, she quipped, “I joined the drama because I liked the script and because it was produced by CJ [ENM].” She continued, “I also really wanted to work with Seo Hyun Jin. I liked the script and I was excited about portraying a ‘womance’ with her. The songs ‘You Are My Spring’ and ‘I Will Go to You Like the First Snow’ [which were written by Lee Mi Na] are some of my favorites. I felt that I could trust her to portray emotions well. When I met the director, he was very warm with me as well.”

Kim Dong Wook talked about his chemistry with Seo Hyun Jin, saying, “I felt that I could depend on her in a romance drama. There’s a reason that she’s called the ‘rom-com queen.’ There were times when I felt more emotion and empathy while acting than I had even when just reading the script. Sometimes I even reacted in ways that surprised myself.”

Lee Mi Na shared why she had picked “seven-year-old” as the key turning point for the drama. “I was watching TV, and there was an elderly person around 60 years old, and they were eating really fast. The person next to them asked why they were eating so fast, and they responded, ‘What would you know of the sorrow of the fifth child in a family of six?’ But it wasn’t like their family was particularly badly off. I thought about how someone could carry that sorrow from childhood into their 60s. I think that everyone has something like that. We all have something from when we were seven, when we were children, that we remember: traumas, complexes, scars. It’s not limited to age seven. I picked ‘seven’ because childhood is not quite over, but we’re not yet at the stage where you can clearly remember things that happen to you.”