Choi Woo-shik turns 35: Oscar-winning Parasite to Train to Busan, how he masters love, cold rage and suspense

In one of the many, many searing scenes of Train to Busan, a desperate Choi Woo-shik and Sohee, who plays his girlfriend, try to break open the compartment door of the ill-fated zombie-ridden train.

Within seconds, death is upon them. Sohee is flung into a zombie and, in a cruel twist, becomes one herself.

 Unable to leave her, Choi Woo-shik stays by her side, with agonising sobs, till she finally kills him.

 There’s silence, with just the sounds of stifled tears and squelches.

 But here, grief is overwhelming, raw, loud and unconstrained. In a show like Our Beloved Summer, Woo-shik, who plays a brokenhearted former lover, shows angst and hurt in a different light: His face is cold, but his eyes are swimming with tears, when he tells a confused Kim Da-mi, that she, always manages to break his trust. His heartbreak is evident when he tells Yeon-su how she always lifts him up, only to let him fall.

These are just some of his popular shows and films, which compounded his fame of late, including the wholesome and profound Melo Movie, a Korean series starring Park Bo-young. The truth is, ever since Woo-shik began his career in 2011, he has tried so many different roles, genres with such varying levels of nuance, there is not even a chance of accidentally typecasting him. For instance, in 2014, he carved a niche for himself with Set Me Free,  where he plays a 16-year-old, craving his father’s validation,  who had abandoned him as a child, only to feel pulsing fury towards him later, after seeing the same treatment meted out to his younger brother.

In 2016, his ability to immerse himself neatly into any character received international recognition with Train to Busan, a psychological zombie thriller, where he plays a basketball player trying to survive a zombie outbreak. He wasn’t just second fiddle to Gong Yoo, nor was he content with being a forgettable supporting character. Woo-shik infused his role with drama and internal struggle, seamlessly blending into the horror. t’s the same actor who played the comic relief as a possible suitor in the romantic and whimsy Fight for My Way, just a year later.

 And then he flipped the switch again with the Oscar-winning Parasite, a grim black comedy, where he plays a son of a destitute family, bluffing his way into a rich household as a tutor. Woo-shik’s seemingly blank-faced Ki-woo crosses this threshold into a world that seems like a dream, compared to the squalor that he lives in. There’s a sense of performative subservience, all while, soaking in a luxury that isn’t his, which eventually comes to blows at the end of the film in a nerve-wracking climax. his time, Woo-shik isn’t running from a zombie but from something far worse—a bloodied man wielding more power with a slab of rock than a horde of the undead. The frenzy, anxiety and race to survive is different and toned down, and yet you feel the same amount of stress while watching Woo-shik, but with less empathy and pity than you did for him in Train to Busan.

 There are many reasons to watch a Woo-shik film, but chief among them is his ability to vanish into a role and explore every shade of his characters.