Park Bo-gum turns 32: Why Hello Monster is his best role yet in a stellar career from Encounter to Tangerines

You have to be grateful for Twitter for recalling what people tend to forget. After When Life Gives You Tangerines became a glowing orange success, there was a flood of appreciation for Park Bo-gum, who played the amiable, affable, adoring Gwan-sik watching over IU’s Ae-sun drive the show forward. Yet, fans of Bo-gum who had watched the star since 2015, this wasn’t just a fleeting spark of brilliance. And it wasn’t as if he had drifted in and out of the spotlight: Bo-gum’s career has been a series of steadfast choices, each proving his ability to shape-shift into what the role demanded—even if the show wasn’t always a hit, Bo-gum always was.

Years before Tangerines, Bo-gum starred in two shows in 2015. One was a comfortable family drama that became one of the highest-rated shows in South Korea, and the other was a psychological thriller, where he played a younger brother to Seo In-guk, seething with rage at the thought of being abandoned after the murder of their father. Bo-gum still has his dimpled smile---but it’s far more bitter, sinister, and pulsing with an unresolved sadness. In one of the most painful scenes of the show, a sullen Bo-gum reveals himself as the neglected brother and later tells In-guk, “You didn’t even recognise me. You sent me away.” And quiet, raging tears fall.

It's a show that his most ardent fans won’t let others forget, even if you cannot connect that it is the same person who starred in the romantic, swoony Encounter, with Song Hye-kyo. Once again, Bo-gum flips the board in his career, turns into a cheerful lover Jin-hyuk, who has ‘dared’ to court the CEO of the hotel where he works. Bo-gum as the earnest lover trying to convince a reticent and emotionally suppressed Hye-kyo is refreshing. And there’s a different maturity, even with the way he deals with love and heartbreak. In one scene, when he doesn’t expect her to show up at his place for dinner as she had former commitments, but she still does, he just sighs, “This is bad. You can’t ever escape now.” In Encounter, itself, he showed the varying hues of emotions, with just his eyes: Hope, to anguish, anguish being extinguished, and hope again.

You can all count them as paving stones to his success to Tangerines. For the first time, Bo-gum played a father. And this time, the heartbreak was far more brutal than before: He stands soaked in cold rains, watching his wife, cradle his child who has passed away. This time, he showed the range of depression, and the determination to suppress it—and yet the signs still showed it, in each trembling gesture, and hollow eyes.

And now, it’s Good Boy. Another hit for Bo-gum and another new character. It might have been more than a decade of Bo-gum, but no doubt, he has more surprises to serve.