Kang Ha-kyung on Bullying Park Ji-hoon and the DM Fallout

Actor Kang Ha-kyung sat down with OSEN at its Mapo-gu office for a wrap interview on tvN/TVING's *Cookmaster Legend*, the military cooking-fantasy drama that opened at 5.8 percent and peaked at 7.9 percent by episode four (Nielsen Korea, paid household basis).

On the show's popularity landing in his daily life, Kang said his Instagram follower count jumped sharply and DMs flooded in. "People around me keep texting — 'my friends are obsessed with you' — and I thought, okay, there's clearly a real reaction happening," he said. "Honestly, I've been living with a regular-person mindset this whole time, so it's been kind of funny." He added that he hasn't been recognized much on the street — and joked that his poor eyesight might be the reason he doesn't notice when he is.

Kang auditioned specifically for the role of Corporal Kim Gwan-cheol, the section leader of Ganglim Outpost's second barracks who torments protagonist Kang Seong-jae (Park Ji-hoon). Five roles were open in the audition pool, and Kang targeted this one from the start. "Out of everything on the table, I thought it was the role where I could shine the most," he said. He bulked up for the character — "I wanted a physical presence in uniform, and since I was playing a villain early on, I ate a lot and built up" — then naturally slimmed back down as the shoot wore on.

Kang confirmed he had already completed his mandatory military service, which was a stated audition requirement. Back in uniform for the role, he described the sensation as somewhere between discomfort and déjà vu. "When you're actually in the military, you count the days every single day — because you're locked in. But on set you're in the uniform and you can just walk out the door. So it wasn't that bad. Still, wearing the uniform brought my mood down. It felt like doing a very long reservist drill."

His real service gave him practical knowledge he passed on to co-star Park Ji-hoon, who has not yet completed his service. Kang coached Park on speech rhythms specific to military life — the flat, mechanical delivery used for barracks announcements, for instance — that he said would have been nearly impossible to get right without lived experience.

Kim Gwan-cheol is a textbook antagonist through episode six before a painful backstory surfaces in episode seven, turning him into one of Seong-jae's allies. Kang said he knew going in that the character would be reformed by the protagonist's cooking, and played the early bullying scenes without letting that endpoint soften the moment. "During the scenes where I'm tormenting him, I couldn't afford to think about what comes later — I just had to stay in that instant."

The hazing scenes — verbal abuse, physical intimidation — generated real viewer anger, and the DMs reflected it. "There was a lot of profanity. It started with 'why are you doing this to him' and some of it got pretty serious," Kang said. "Some people crossed into territory that felt like it was coming after me as a person, not the character — content I thought, yeah, that's too far." He exhaled with relief when the reaction softened after episode seven. "Between episodes six and seven I had sweaty palms for a full week. I thought one more scene and I was done for."

The guilt extended to set. Park Ji-hoon's particular quality of expression — a kind of quietly devastated gaze that has become a signature of the show — made the scenes harder to get through. "He's the person I felt the most sorry for on this entire production," Kang said. "There were things I had to do aggressively. For the bathroom scene in episode three, I grabbed his face once and then just kept saying, 'I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I won't mess up the take.' His eyes were just so — beautiful."

Kang also credited the box-office explosion of Park Ji-hoon's film *The Man Who Lives with the King* (dir. Jang Hang-jun) for giving the cast a morale boost in the back half of a long shoot. "That film blew up right as we were finishing," he said. "Everyone was going around saying 'we made it' and it carried us through. When a shoot goes long, there's always a moment where the energy dips — we cleared that completely. 'Long live *Wangsanam*.' And since we genuinely benefited from it, we're truly grateful. I'm always thankful to Ji-hoon."

*(Continued in Part 2.)*

Korean dramas adapted from web novels (*웹소설*, webtoon's prose equivalent) routinely change character arcs from the source material; Kang's note that the script diverged from the original is standard production context, not a spoiler warning.

having completed mandatory military service; an audition requirement on this production and a key credential for playing Korean military roles convincingly.