Lee Seon Kyun: “… it deeply affected me in a way I didn’t expect.”
The third and final part of Lee Seon Kyun and IU’s interview with Korean TV Drama（韓国TVドラマ） magazine Vol. 86 August 2018
Continued from [Part 1] and [Part 2]
Which other scenes left an impression on you?
IU: Dong Hoon’s smile in a scene in the last episode was really memorable. There’s this special angle whenever he smiles on screen, these laugh lines appear right here on Sunbae’s face (points at his face while talking). It was something he had never shown to Ji An before. Back then while filming, and even now thinking back it kind of makes me want to cry.
(Fun Quiz: Which smile was IU referring to?)
LSK: Go Do Shim, who plays my mother in the show, resembles my mom. I wasn’t supposed to cry because Dong Hoon is such a restrained guy but it just gave me such intense feels. The scene where the three brothers talk about their father, perhaps it’s because I’ve gotten older but it deeply affected me in a way I didn’t expect. (* see translator’s note below)
Watch the scene between the brothers again here:
I’m sure this is a production that was really unforgettable for viewers. What was it like for the two of you, acting in the drama?
LSK: This production team was so great that I’ll never forget them all my life. I have to start filming a movie this week so I’m at the point where I have to tell myself “it’s no big deal” and pull myself out of character and from the drama.
IU: For the two weeks after the drama ended I was extremely sad. To the extent that I couldn’t even bear to hear the drama’s music. But I’ve managed to put enough distance that I can watch the show. I even went on a solo vacation to Japan recently. In that time alone I encouraged myself, “I’ve got to do my very best in my music too”, and it’s gotten a lot easier since.
[end]
@Justamom will take a short break and return next week with a translation of the second part of Lee Seon Kyun and IU’s interview with Haru Hana magazine. (yes, there’s more, much more! Three pages long, to be exact)
*Translator’s note: This was the shortest but most challenging part to translate! There were just many words in Japanese that don’t have any equivalent in English. I’ve included the original Japanese text of Lee Seon Kyun’s answer below:
僕は母親役のゴ・ドゥシム先生が僕の母とそっくりで。ドンフンは無愛想な息子だから泣いちゃいけないのに、内心感情が高ぶってしまうというなかなかない経験をしました。三兄弟で父親のことを話すシーンも、年を取ったせいか思い掛けずぐっとするものがありました。
You can almost hear the emotion in his voice as he struggles to compose his thoughts. Some of you may already know, but Lee Seon Kyun’s mother passed away unexpectedly in 2011. Which were the most memorable scenes of Dong Hoon and his mother for you?
Check out more cast interviews here:
Japanese Release: Official M-NET Interview
Oh Nara – Our My Ahjussi Chat Is Just As Hot As Ever
MK Star Interview with Oh Nara – “The Girl Who Loves A Monk”
My Ahjussi / My Mister Fan Site 
Yes, the MA’s OSTs always bring back so many feels…
There were times when I couldn’t listen to them because they make me cry 😢
Even now, if I want some background music (to accompany me while doing other stuff) I won’t put MA OSTs in the playlist. Because there’s a high chance I’ll stop doing the work to sing along, drowning in feels and do some rewatching instead (speaking from experience 😅).
I wish there’s a video for this interview (and other interviews too), not just written. It’s always fun to see LSK in interviews because he jokes and laughs a lot, but I also want to see his expression in the somber parts of this interview too.
And of course, it would be wonderful to see LSK and IU interacting outside their roles.
Thanks so much for the translation!
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Same. Would love to see the interview; they seem to interact with each other a lot.
My favorite Dong Hoon – omma scene is when he asks her if she also regards him as pitiful. He can’t seem to stop thinking about Ji An and brings her up to everybody he knows: Jung Hee, the monk, even his own mother. He never reveals the person, of course, but his behavior reminds me of young people in love. 🙂 And how much do I love the fact that omma understands her son is struggling, even when he tries to make it look like everything is swell for her sakes.
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That’s the great thing about Japanese interviews, they try their best to capture the dialogue as it happened so you can actually “hear” them forming (or in LSK’s case struggling to form) their thoughts.
I’m getting into linguistics and translation theory here but the rapport that you see (and I tried to convey) also has to do with the nature of Japanese and Korean, where it can be considered rude to make proclamatory or declarative statements like “it’s like this”, or “it’s like that.” Instead they use a lot of sentence endings in conversation which are more like “don’t you think?”, “isn’t it”, “right”?
@sadiesmith972 that was the exact scene that came to mind as well but we don’t know which scene was in Lee Seon Kyun’s mind as he stopped mid sentence!
-Justamom
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That’s my favourite scene as well, but I do have to say that I love that scene where Dong Hoon is promoted and his mom is there at Jung Hee’s bar for the party and she gives him a hug before she leaves… I almost cried because she was so happy… and I think that Dong Hoon (or LSK?) almost cried too 🙂
I love Sodia’s music for the MA’s OST but “A Million Roses” always makes me cry so what @widala09 said is so relatable to me… I can’t listen that much… especially when I’m working because I want to cry and remember MA.
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Justamom, thanks for the lesson on Japanese interviews. Is that Japanese excerpt anything like the inclusion of “umm….”, “err….”, “hmm…” in printed English?
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No, not quite. You got me searching for my decades old college linguistics papers and I found the term! It’s called ‘back-channeling’:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4168001?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Click to access Mister_O_Corpus_KaoriKobayashi.pdf
Use of “ne” and “yo”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216606001330
And I found the linguistic term I was trying to remember, for Ji An’s use of informal speech when she talks to Dong Hoon. It’s called “soliloquy”:
Click to access Soliloquy-StudiesInLanguage.pdf
Click to access Self.pdf
Sorry for geeking out about translation here 🙂
– justamom
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