Letting Go Of Kdrama Characters

If you find it hard to say goodbye to a kdrama character, think how hard it must be for the actors who portray them.

To give a great performance in a drama, an actor really has to become the character they play, to almost live inside their skin. The down side of becoming so invested in playing a character is that it can be difficult to let go once the drama is over. Some actors find it takes months to say goodbye.

At the premier of her new drama, "I Hear Your Voice," actress Lee Bo Young admitted that it was tough to get over her last character, Seo Young in the popular series, "My Daughter Seo Young." The 50 episode-series focused on the broken relationship between Seo Young and her father. Although it ended well, it was hard for her to walk away.

"I was depressed after "My Daughter Seo-Young," said Lee. "It was depressing to have to let go of the character."

Another actor who admits that he has a hard time letting go of characters is Jo In Sung. When asked if he found it easy to let go of Oh Soo, his romantic con man character in "That Winter, The Wind Blows," he admitted it was not. While the time it takes for him to say goodbye to a character can vary some are harder than others.

"I didn't really count how many days it took," said Jo In Sung. "I spent five months shooting this drama so it's not that easy to let go of a character that you live in for so many months. That's my weakness."

The more emotional the project, the harder it may be to let go. As Park Yoo Chun was wrapping up his role in "Missing You," he felt very protective of his character's world.

"This was a really emotional project and I became very attached to my Han Jung Woo character," said Park. "I really want to protect the world that Han Jung Woo lives in and I think I'm going to live with the desire to protect the people he wishes to protect until the very end."

Yoon Eun Hye, who played his love interest, found it easier to say goodbye to Lee Soo Yeon, the character whose painful life she portrayed with so much conviction.

"I was able to leave her fairly easily," said Yoon Eun Hye. "The suffering that she experienced can happen to anyone and the way I process things is similar to the way she does. In some ways she wasn't very different from me and maybe that's how I could say goodbye without much difficulty."

For some actors, the remedy is to start a new drama. That's what worked for Lee Bo Young. She was still down when she got the script for her new drama, "I Hear Your Voice," but the first four episodes were so much fun to film she knew she would recover. It helped that her new character Jang Hye Seong seemed similar to Seo Young even though the court drama is nothing like "My Daughter Seo Young."

"If Seo Young was an uncommunicative character, then this one is a bright one," she said.