K-drama star Jung Kyung-ho, who in Crash Course in Romance plays a fragile celebrity maths teacher, talks about his sensitive roles

In the hit Korean drama series Crash Course in Romance, streaming on Netflix, Jung Kyung-ho plays an anorexic, overly sensitive star tutor

Jung talks about how he’s becoming more flexible at playing fragile characters as he ages, and his joy at working with co-star Jeon Do-yeon

2-MIN READ2-MIN

Korean star Jung Kyung-ho in a still from K-drama Crash Course in Romance.

Published: 6:15pm, 9 Mar 2023

By Lee Gyu-lee

Actor Jung Kyung-ho has amassed quite a wide-ranging repertoire throughout his 19-year acting career, taking on projects spanning the genres of thrillers and crime to comedy and romance.

But among those, he has made a strong impression by playing delicate, sensitive roles such as a terminally ill man in Beating Again (2015) or a detective who constantly faces attacks or accidents in Life on Mars (2018).

His most recent portrayal of such a character was as an anorexic, overly sensitive celebrity maths lecturer, Choi Chi-yeol, in tvN’s romcom series Crash Course in Romance.

Jeon Do-yeon as Nam Haeng-sun (left) and Jung Kyung-ho as Choi Chi-yeol in a still from “Crash Course in Romance”. Photo: tvN

“Looking back, I’ve been playing agitated and sensitive characters for the past eight years. I used to think I needed to break away from that box. But one day, I was monitoring my acting as Choi Chi-yeol and I felt I was doing something different than my previous roles,” says the actor.