January 24, 2025
SEOUL – Doh Kyung-soo speaks barely above a whisper at a cafe in Seoul’s Samcheong-dong. Wearing a flannel shirt and a backward baseball cap, he maintains a deadpan expression that occasionally cracks into inadvertent humor, prompting ripples of laughter from the group of reporters.
“I’m a very normal person,” he says with such sincerity that it elicits another round of laughter. “I just sit around watching YouTube cooking videos in my spare time,”
The self-effacement seems rather odd coming from the actor better known as K-pop idol D.O. of EXO, a powerhouse in music that has maintained its cultural grip for over a decade. His parallel career in acting has been just as notable, with recent roles ranging from a maverick prosecutor in TV drama “Bad Prosecutor” (2022) to a stranded astronaut in the ambitious but spectacular flop “The Moon” (2023).
Doh’s latest venture, “Secret: Untold Melody,” sees him taking on a Korean remake of Jay Chou’s beloved 2007 Taiwanese romance “Secret.” The film follows Yu-jun, a piano prodigy grappling with trauma who transfers to a Korean college and becomes entangled in an improbable romance.
It is a departure that presented unexpected challenges for Doh, beginning with the most obvious: He could barely read sheet music.
“I was losing my mind during piano practice,” he says. “My character is supposed to be this world-renowned pianist and the pieces in the movie — even a decade of practice wouldn’t be enough for me. It just wasn’t realistic to expect that I could perform them start to finish.”
So, instead, he focused on mimicking the physical gestures of a pianist to the point of perfection, drawing on his experience as an K-pop performer. “Copying movements, syncing with music — that part wasn’t entirely foreign to me, given my background in dance and singing.”
But the real challenge was less the Rachmaninoff than the film’s romance writ large. For someone as naturally reserved as Doh, the swooning emotions and theatrical lines characteristic of the teen romance proved as daunting as the piano sequences.
“The script wants this look of pure love, but shouldn’t the character be more concerned with the laws of physics being broken?” he asks, his matter-of-fact tone making the observation unexpectedly hilarious. His methodical deconstruction of genre tropes continues: “We had these lines like ‘I’m playing this for you’ or ‘you are my miracle’ — it just doesn’t make sense in real life.”
His dissection of the role, however, reveals the actor’s serious approach to his craft. “Finding the right balance was crucial. Too much intensity makes it melodramatic; too little leaves it flat. I had to fine-tune my lines for each cut. It became this precise calibration process.”
Away from the screen, Doh’s passion centers on cooking, a pursuit he approaches with the same focused intensity he brings to his roles. His culinary skills are well-documented; he recently ran a potato-themed cafeteria as head chef on variety show “Eat What You Reap.”
“My curiosity about food started when I tasted something and became obsessed with re-creating that exact flavor. I tend to dive deep into whatever interests me, sometimes recklessly so.”
This single-minded devotion, he says, was a thread that helped him connect with his role. “If I think about it, that personality trait might have helped me understand Yu-jun’s blind pursuit of love.”
Asked about his hopes for the film’s reception, Doh retreats into his characteristic reserve. “It’s really a gentle movie, not too intense,” he says. “It’s a family-friendly fantasy romance. People who appreciate pure romance over intense genres will enjoy it.”
He pauses, then adds somewhat awkwardly, as if he has caught himself saying too much: “That’s pretty much it.”
“Secret: Untold Melody” opens nationwide Tuesday.