So Ji-sub Can't Watch the Video of Meeting His Wife, But He'll Take '23% Ratings' Any Day

So Ji-sub's regular gym and the restaurant around the corner from it started calling him "Kim Bu-jang" sometime around episode four. That's when the SBS drama crossed 20% nationwide ratings. By the finale, it hit 23%. He says when someone shouts it across a room now, he turns around without thinking.

'Chief Kim' (김부장) finished its 10-episode run on SBS and racked up roughly 25.63 million cumulative viewers across original broadcasts and reruns, which SBS noted is close to half the country's total population. For context, that kind of number on free-to-air television in South Korea right now is the equivalent of a mild miracle. Linear TV ratings have been in freefall for years. So Ji-sub's reaction to all of it: "It felt like being on a hidden-camera prank show. I genuinely could not believe it."

The drama follows Kim Bu-jang, a former North-South joint intelligence operative who has spent years living quietly as an unremarkable middle manager at a savings bank. When his teenage daughter disappears, he stops hiding. So Ji-sub plays the role with almost no visible emotional range, minimal dialogue, controlled stillness, the occasional explosion of physical violence, and he knows exactly why some viewers have found that style alienating over the years. "There are people who didn't like me because I act with my eyes instead of my emotions," he said. "So when 'Chief Kim' came along and people actually responded well to that restrained style, I was genuinely grateful."

He's quick to point out that he doesn't think he carried the show alone. Costars Choi Dae-hoon and Yoon Kyung-ho, who play Kim Bu-jang's two longtime friends, get most of the credit in So Ji-sub's telling. "Kyung-ho expresses everything with his whole body. Dae-hoon is sharp, calculated, deliberate with his words. I'm the quiet anchor. The three of us just fit together." He says the trio rehearsed every scene obsessively, so thoroughly that when the cameras rolled, they rarely needed a second take. The improvised moments they added along the way, he says, came out of those rehearsals, not from any individual brilliance.

The hardest scene to film was a frozen warehouse sequence shot during one of the winter's worst cold snaps. So Ji-sub was in a suit, in the rain, in sub-zero temperatures, while his character processed the possibility that his daughter might be dead. "The cold just took over everything," he said. "I was so cold I couldn't perform. The emotion disappeared."

Playing a father of a high school-aged daughter carried its own challenge. So Ji-sub married broadcaster Jo Eun-jung in 2020 and the couple don't have children. He came prepared anyway: during their first day of shooting, he handed his young costar Seo Su-min a heart-shaped candy and told her simply, "Let's take care of each other." He thinks the slight awkwardness between them actually helped. "The distance worked for the story. She treated me the way she treats her real dad, and that made the whole thing easier to find."

Director Lee Seung-young said in a separate statement that he discovered a new side of So Ji-sub through this project. So Ji-sub isn't entirely sure what that means. "I'm curious what face he saw," he laughed. "I only ever see the parts I wasn't happy with."

That chronic dissatisfaction is deliberate, he insists. "The moment I'm 100% satisfied with my own performance is the moment I should stop acting. That would mean I've started to believe my own hype. So I stay unsatisfied. It's what makes me want to do better next time."

He's been in the business long enough that on most sets now, he's the oldest person there. Thirty years since his 1995 debut as a model, followed by his 1997 acting debut in SBS's Yeoja. He feels the seniority. "I thought it would get easier. It doesn't. If anything I feel more responsible, like I need to be the team captain. I hope the people I came up with in this industry can all stay in it for a long time."

His closest friend in the industry is actor Song Seung-heon. That's the full list of close industry friends, by his own admission.

After every project he travels. He hasn't decided where yet, but it won't be the mountains. "I'm a sea person," he said. As for what comes next professionally, he's deliberately not rushing back into action. "'Chief Kim' did so well that jumping straight into another action project feels like too much pressure. I'm looking at other kinds of roles too."

He was asked about an old Hanbaem interview clip, the one where he and his wife Jo Eun-jung met for the first time on camera, which recently resurfaced online and went viral again. His response was immediate: "I can't click on it. It's too embarrassing." He was careful about how much he said beyond that. "There's a reason I don't talk about her much. She used to work in broadcasting, but now I want her to live as herself, not as someone's wife. A lot of people still don't even know who she is. I want to keep it that way."

Asked what's made him happiest recently, he didn't mention a vacation or a personal milestone. He said finishing 'Chief Kim' well means he can approach his next project with a clear head. Then he drew the line himself: "If Sorry, I Love You was the first chapter of my career as an actor, 'Chief Kim' is the one that opened the second chapter. I want to keep writing the pages after that."