Nam Joo-hyuk returns with 'The East Palace' after military service, seeking stronger roles

Nam Joo-hyuk may have enjoyed playing romantic comedy leads, but after a mandatory two-year break from acting, he knew he was ready to branch out. That led him to choose “The East Palace” as his comeback project, playing Gu-cheon, a peach tree branch-wielding ghost hunter whose relationship with the female lead is, according to the actor, “up to the viewer’s imagination.”

"I started wanting to try a wider range of characters while in the military, [where] I had time to look back on my filmography," Nam said. The actor spoke with reporters on Tuesday following the series' premiere last Friday, in his first roundtable interview since he finished his service in 2024. 

The actor had his breakout role in the coming-of-age drama “Who Are You: School 2015” (2015) and went on to play romantic leads in series including “Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo” (2016) and “Twenty Five Twenty One” (2022), though he also showed a darker side as an antihero in the action thriller “Vigilante” (2023).

"I still want to do romantic comedies, of course, and there are so many things I still want to try. But thinking about what I wanted to show going forward, I felt that I wanted to take on more characters with stronger personalities," he said.

"The East Palace" follows Gu-cheon, a man who can traverse between two worlds — one occupied by the living, and the other by spirits — by drowning himself. He is forcibly taken to the royal palace on the king's orders to save the last remaining prince, whom the court believes is being plagued by a ghost. There, he meets Saeng-gang, a lady of the court who can hear ghosts, played by Roh Yoon-seo, and the two begin unraveling the palace’s secrets as they search for the source of the tragedies befalling the royal bloodline.

“I didn’t think of it as romance at all,” Nam said of Gu-cheon's dynamic with Saeng-gang. “I approached it more as two people who ultimately come to rely on each other, almost like saviors to one another. I also thought of it as a kind of comradeship.”

“As for whether it feels like romance, I wanted to leave that up to the viewer's imagination," he said — either as romance, or as "something beyond."

Nam returns to the small screen and civilian life, while waging a legal battle against an individual who accused him school bullying. He denied the allegations, which came from multiple accounts starting from June 2022, and entered the military in March 2023. Prosecutors fined one accuser, as well as the reporter who published the accusations, 7 million won ($4,740) each for defamation in 2024. The alleged victim appealed the penalty.

“I don’t feel wronged,” Nam said in the Tuesday interview. “There has been a court ruling, and articles have been published. There is time," he said, but declined to comment any further.

He said he first read the script for “The East Palace” while he was in the military, when he was “full of energy and passion,” but was also worried that acting might feel different after his return. 

The concern quickly faded. When he arrived on set for the test shoot, it took him only about five to 10 minutes to feel comfortable again, Nam said.

“Before I knew it, I was saying things like, ‘Director, what do you think about this here?’ or ‘I think Gu-cheon would move this way in this scene,’” Nam said. “Seeing myself do that without even realizing it, I felt that I had adjusted again pretty quickly.”

He didn't see much of himself in Gu-cheon — except maybe being physically fit and having a strong work ethic.

“When he has something he has to do, other people might wonder, ‘Does he really prepare that much?’ But he does,” Nam said. “He may grumble, but he still does everything he needs to do.”

Instead, he built the character through Gu-cheon’s backstory and action scenes. Nam also lost 7 kilograms (15 pounds) to show the physical toll on Gu-cheon, whom he interpreted as a once free-spirited and unmotivated man who gradually becomes drained as he enters a palace filled with powerful personalities and repeatedly crosses into the world of spirits.

"The ghosts have their own backstories. [Gu-cheon’s fighting scenes] come from the thought of sending them off to a better place,” Nam said. “So I think it was far from movements meant to punish or eliminate them.”

“Instead of saying, ‘Please go to a better place,’ he says it through his actions,” he said. “He tries to listen to what the ghosts have to say, and there are more moments where he tells them to stop. So if I had to say whether it was aggressive or defensive action, I would say it was defensive.”

BY KIM JU-YEON [[email protected]]