Who is ‘The Marvels’ actor Park Seo-joon and what is his connection with BTS’ Kim Tae-hyung?

Korean actor Park Seo-joon will be breaking into Hollywood soon with a promising role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s forthcoming The Marvels, alongside Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris and Iman Vellani. The actor is rumored to be playing Prince Yan of Aladna, who is briefly engaged to Captain Marvel in the comics.

Seo-joon has been famous in the Korean entertainment industry for years, although Western audiences might know him best from his short appearance in Bong Joon-Ho’s Oscar winning Parasite, where he played Kim Ki-woo/Kevin’s best friend. Still, with how popular Korean dramas have become in the past few years, many will know Seo-joon from his plethora of leading roles in hit shows like Hwarang: The Poet Warrior Youth, and Fight for My Way.

However, it wasn’t until 2018 that Seo-joon’s career really exploded. Back-to-back major successes in What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim and Itaewon Class turned the actor into a staple of K-Drama and K-Comedy. On the big screen, he’s notably starred in the 2019 horror flick The Divine Fury and the action-comedy from 2017, Midnight Runners.

The Seoul native has gone on to win countless awards and countless fans, all culminating in his big Hollywood debut, in none other than a Marvel film. You can’t find a bigger stage than that.

As expected, in his path to stardom, Seo-joon has made a lot of equally famous friends. The most famous, perhaps, is BTS’ Kim Taehyung, also know as V.

Park Seo-joon and Kim Tae-hyung’s friendship

Seo-joon is responsible for bringing together the most eclectic and handsome friend group in South Korea. Known as the WOOGA Squad, it includes Seo-joon, Tae-huyng, actors Choi Woo-shik (Parasite) and Park Hyung-sik (Strong Girl Bong-soon), and rapper Peakboy.

Seo-joon was already friends with Woo-shik and Peakboy when he became close with Tae-hyung and Hyung-sik on the set of Hwarang in 2016. The two Hwarang stars were then introduced to Woo-shik and Peakboy by Seo-joon and the five rapidly became inseparable.

Besides supporting each other during important events, and collaborating on variety shows and music singles, the WOOGA squad vacations together often. Eventually, they borrowed the name WOOGA from the Korean phrase “Woori-ga Gajok-inga?,” which translates to “Are we family?”

Recently, they got together for the Disney Plus reality television series In The Soop: Friendcation, where they spent four days in Goseong, in the snowy Gangwon province, preparing meals, playing games, and just hanging out like any other group of 20 to 30 year-olds. Seo-joon, Tae-hyung, and Woo-shik will also star in a new variety show for Amazon Prime called Jinny’s Kitchen, where they’ll be working in a Korean street food restaurant in Mexico.