Veteran K-drama actor Kim Ji Hoon is getting candid about a time in his career few would expect — when he was completely out of work.
In a new YouTube video titled “Younger Actor Kim Ji Hoon Visits Kim Jung Nan’s Home”, the actor sat down with fellow actress Kim Jung Nan for a heartfelt conversation about his 3-year hiatus from the industry and the mental toll it took.
“People only saw me as a weekend drama actor. I wanted to take on film roles or more serious dramas, and I believed I could — but no one else did. So I stopped working. For three years, I got nothing but the same type of roles.”
Despite pushing his agency for new opportunities, Kim said all he received were vague reassurances and empty promises. The breaking point came when he waited months for a project he thought was a sure thing, only to wake up and see a news article announcing someone else had been cast.
Trying to stay positive, Kim initially filled his time with travel, exercise, books, and movies. But eventually, even that felt meaningless.
“Nothing would stick. I’d read a page and remember nothing. Watch a movie and not understand it. So I turned to gaming. It was the only thing that let me forget reality for a while. I ended up playing one game all the way through for nearly a year — it was like my antidepressant.”
From the outside, Kim Ji Hoon may look like a steady face in K-drama. But behind the scenes, his journey is a raw and relatable story of rejection, reinvention, and rediscovering purpose — one pause, and one video game, at a time.
