Mr Viral
There’s a subtly powerful moment in the second season finale of Squid Game, the dystopian Korean drama that became a worldwide sensation in 2021. Protagonist Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) has managed to recruit a brave group of volunteers to storm the game’s control room in an attempt to stop the deadly competition. But first, they have to figure out how to wield the submachine guns they’ve managed to strip from some of their pink-suited captors.
Up steps Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon), who confidently shows her fellow players how to reload the magazines and conserve fire. “It was my idea to add the last line, where she asks everybody, ‘Are we clear?’” says Park. It’s a simple improvisation, but a significant one: When the makeshift soldiers, who are all men, respond affirmatively in unison, it cements that they have submitted to the authority of a transgender woman.
In a story populated by people ruled by greed or cowardice, Hyun-ju stands out. A former sergeant first class in the South Korean army’s Special Forces (roughly equivalent to the US Green Berets), she joins the show’s titular battle royale in order to earn money for gender-affirming surgery. The character is not just sympathetic but heroic, while also retaining complexity. She’s become a fan favorite—a surprising development considering the wariness that greeted the character when she was first glimpsed in promotional materials for the show’s heavily anticipated return in December. Though Hyun-ju is trans, Park, a well-known veteran of Korean dramas, is not—“a retro casting decision,” as them called it.
Now, in one of his first interviews with American media, Park is addressing those apprehensions. “I too had those concerns in the beginning, being a cisgender male actor portraying a transgender woman,” he tells Vanity Fair, speaking through an interpreter. “Would it be okay for me to take on this role?”
There’s a long, global history of marginalized characters being played by less marginalized performers—straight actors playing gay roles, able-bodied artists playing people with disabilities, white actors as people of color. For trans characters in particular, being played by cis actors perpetuates the damaging belief that being trans is just a put-on, and true gender identity remains the one a person was assigned at birth.
It’s a frustrating practice, but one that pales in importance next to the very real threats facing trans people worldwide. In South Korea, where the out trans population is much smaller comparatively than it is in the US, a plurality of people hold generally favorable attitudes toward the trans population—and believe that Korean society is becoming more accepting of trans rights. Yet discrimination is still widespread enough to be a social issue. On social media, defenders of Park’s casting say that it would have been dangerous, or at least difficult, for a trans woman to take on the role of Hyun-ju in Squid Game, if the show’s casting department could even find one in the first place. The most famous (and practically the only) out trans celebrity in Korea is Harisu, a 49-year-old singer and actress, who in 2002 became the country’s second person to legally change their gender.
Harisu has not commented on Squid Game, and Park says the two have never met, although he spoke with other transgender people—friends of his friends from the LGBTQ+ community, as well as consultants introduced to him by the show’s creative team—while preparing to film the show.
“By speaking to them, I got a glimpse into their lives and learned about some of their struggles and their insights,” Park says. “Still today, there is so much hardship, and a lot of biases and disadvantages they have to fight through. So I hope that through the character of Hyun-ju, we can hope for a better society where the LGBTQ+ community will no longer have to struggle with these things.”
In addition to gender identity, Hyun-ju represents other major departures from Park’s previous work. The actor has about 15 years of professional experience on stage and screen but broke out internationally in 2022’s The Glory—where he played one of the Netflix revenge drama’s antagonists, a slimy and profane country club heir with a violent temper. The role got him multiple supporting actor nominations in Korea and kicked off Park’s penchant for playing bad guys, such as a murderously manipulative M&A exec scheming to steal both the girl and the company in the 2024 romantic comedy Queen of Tears (also on Netflix). Park shot that series concurrently with Squid Game.
“I don’t get so into my characters that they impact me in real life, but when I’m playing a villain, I find myself at times more irritable,” he says. “But because Hyun-ju is such a warm-hearted person, I think she affected me in a positive way, even when I was playing a villain in Queen of Tears at the same time.”
Despite his reputation for onscreen villainy, it was Park’s award-winning role as a grieving father in 2021’s Hee-su (My Daughter), a Black Mirror–esque television movie about a couple that turns to virtual reality to cope with their child’s death, that inspired Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk to offer him the part of Hyun-ju.
“I don’t know how he saw [Hyun-ju] in that project,” Park laughs, although he says that Hwang was looking for an actor who could play altruism, justice, and leadership. It was that dimensionality—and, of course, the chance to appear in Netflix’s most-watched title of all time—that led Park to say yes.
“Hyun-ju has so many different layers and traits. Being transgender is one of her many aspects,” he says. “She has so many different charms and appeals, so I hoped that if I were as cautious and thoughtful as possible in portraying this wonderful character, those concerns [about casting] would lift.”
Park is particularly proud of the monologue he delivers as Hyun-ju in season two’s fifth episode, “One More Game,” where the character opens up to her new friends about her life after coming out. “Please add this line: ‘My mother cried a lot,’” Hwang instructed Park on set. “And I want those emotions to peek through, but not be over the top.”
Squid Game’s depiction of a trans character is groundbreaking, particularly for Korean popular media—which until very recently was still deploying bad drag as a common variety show gag. Park says he and Hwang were both adamant that Hyun-ju be seen as neither one note nor a joke.
“The first thing that director Hwang and I agreed very strongly on is that we didn’t want Hyun-ju to be a caricature,” he says. “In building the character, we went through countless discussions, from her outer appearance to her inner introspection.”
Reactions to Hyun-ju’s storyline, which finds other characters journeying from ignorance to allyship, have been effusive among both cis and trans viewers, even as they hope the positive representation leads to opportunities for trans performers themselves. “Hyun-ju is a character who is selfless, so considerate of other people, righteous, and a born leader, so I did think people were going to love her. Having said that, she is receiving so much more love than I ever expected, so I’m just really filled with gratitude,” Park says. “I hope through Hyun-ju, people will experience a change of heart or mind. In that sense, in the future, I definitely think there will be more transgender characters—as well as, hopefully, transgender actors in the industry.”
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