Seo Kang-jun on Love After Filming Exhausted Him: 'I Must Stand Firm First'

Seo Kang-jun is currently playing one of the warmer boyfriends on Korean television, but the views he shared in Elle Korea's October issue are notably less romantic in the conventional sense. On the 23rd, the fashion magazine published the spread and interview it shot with the actor under the concept "Off Duty," and the images aimed to catch something caught between boyishness and a more guarded adult presence.

The drama in question is Any Love But Yours, in which Seo plays Nam Gung-ho, the gentle and attentive long-term boyfriend of Lee Mi-do (played by Ahn Eun-jin). When Elle asked how he felt wrapping production, his answer went somewhere more interior than most cast interviews do. "I spent a lot of myself trying to fully understand the emotional state of Nam Gung-ho and Mi-do, and to express what came from that understanding," he said. "After pouring out everything inside, I'm going through a kind of exhaustion."

That exhaustion, it turns out, came partly from how he chose to read the character. Rather than playing Nam Gung-ho as simply reliable and kind, Seo wanted something more complicated underneath. "I hoped he would be a person who looks perfectly put-together and lives by the rules, but is actually anxious and unstable," he explained. It's the kind of character note that tends to make a performance feel lived-in rather than illustrative.

On love and the limits of sacrifice

The interview's most-quoted section is where Seo pushed back gently on the idea of love as total self-surrender. "I believe you can only love someone properly if you're standing firm yourself," he said. "Sacrifice for another person is one of love's many forms, but the prerequisite is keeping your own life intact. Your partner cannot become the reason for your existence."

It's a position that would resonate with anyone who has watched the show's central tension unfold, and it's also just a remarkably clear-eyed thing to say in a magazine spread built around romantic imagery.

He went further when the conversation moved to the emptiness that follows small pleasures. Rather than framing it as something to push through, Seo called it useful. "Emptiness is a precious opportunity to encounter my true self," he said, adding that a life worth living includes not just positive emotions but "solitude, emptiness, and loneliness" as well. He mentioned Hermann Hesse's novel Siddhartha in this context, pointing to the way its emphasis on inward searching aligns with his own approach to acting.

Where he wants to go as a performer

On craft, Seo was honest about what he hasn't yet figured out. "I want to peel back one more layer of my expressive limits," he said, "but at the same time I want the courage to strip expression away. I want to bring emotion more inward, so it can be felt without having to be shown." Less surface, more weight: it's a goal that a lot of actors talk about, but rarely with this much specificity about what it actually involves.

The full interview and complete photo spread, which covers his thoughts on love, belief, and sustaining a long relationship, are available in Elle Korea's October issue and on the magazine's website. A companion video is also planned for the Elle Korea YouTube channel.