Park Jin-young, left, and Kim Min-ju are seen during a press conference for JTBC drama "Still Shining" at the Link Seoul hotel in Guro District, Thursday. Courtesy of JTBC
Park Jin-young, best known as a member of the K-pop boy band GOT7, and Kim Min-ju, formerly of IZ*ONE, are set to star together in a youthful melodrama that captures the beauty of growing up and finding love.
The pair will lead JTBC’s new Friday-Saturday drama “Still Shining,” which follows the intertwined lives of two characters from their teenage years into their 30s. The series portrays how they become each other’s light throughout the changing seasons of life.
Director Kim Yoon-jin, known for “Our Beloved Summer,” described the drama as “a story about Tae-seo (Park) and Eun-ah (Kim), who first meet at the age of 19 in the countryside and reunite years later to confront their true feelings” during a press conference in Seoul on Thursday.
“The writer didn’t place the characters amid any grand events. Instead, the story captures the quiet passage of seasons and the accumulation of time, which I believe will stay with viewers in a special way. While ‘Our Beloved Summer’ evoked the warmth of spring and early summer, ‘Still Shining’ portrays love that endures through all four seasons before spring returns,” he added.
Park portrays Tae-seo, a subway train operator who, as he explains, “is someone focused only on the present moment. Despite being intelligent, he chooses a stable, familiar path rather than a challenging one. He’s shaped by family circumstances and his desire for comfort.”
A poster for JTBC drama "Still Shinning" / Courtesy of JTBC
Reflecting on playing the same character across teenage to adult years, Park said, “When I first read the script, I thought Tae-seo was an ordinary person, which made him difficult to express. The director and writer told me they wanted him to remain fundamentally the same through the decades — someone who faces hardship differently but never loses himself. I wanted viewers to feel, ‘I wish someone like this really existed.’”
Kim takes on her first leading role as a hotelier and manager of a guesthouse in Seoul. Still in her 20s, the actor admitted she found portraying her character’s 30s a unique challenge.
“It was fascinating to craft her growth in a multidimensional way,” she said. “Playing someone older than myself meant I couldn’t rely only on appearance. I built the character by thinking deeply about how her attitude and values would shift over time.”
Source: Korea Times News
