'Savor each episode,' Park Chan-wook says of 'The Sympathizer'

Director Park Chan-wook discusses his perspective on handling "The Sympathizer" with respect to the Vietnam War and shares insights on the casting process and his childhood influences, urging viewers to savor each episode, cliff-hangers and all.

Director Park Chan-wook answers questions from reporters following a screening of two episodes of his latest historical black comedy series ″The Sympathizer″ at Megabox COEX in southern Seoul on Thursday. ″The Sympathizer″ is available for streaming in Korea exclusively on Coupang Play. New episodes are uploaded every Monday. [NEWS1]

Director Park Chan-wook believes he’s sufficiently qualified to direct a series on the Vietnam War despite being neither Vietnamese nor American — and he's not about to shame other directors for being removed from their subject matters, either.

“I don’t think [writers] should worry about whether or not they’re qualified to deal with a foreign country’s history as a subject matter, nor do I think they have to belong to that specific community to be qualified,” Park said.

“If a German director wanted to handle a story about Korean history, I would not belittle them. I would be curious to find out what that person thought and how they perceived Korean society.”

HBO television series “The Sympathizer,” for which Park directed the first three episodes and served as chief showrunner and executive producer, premiered in Korea on Coupang Play on April 15. Park answered questions from the local press on Thursday following a screening of the series’ first two episodes.

A scene from the second episode of ″The Sympathizer.″ Actor Ho Xuande plays the Captain, a man born to a French father and a Vietnamese mother. He serves as a North Vietnamese mole in the South Vietnamese army who is forced to move to the United States near the end of the Vietnam War. [COUPANG PLAY]

The series is an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyuen.

It follows the story of the Captain, played by Hoa Xuande, a North Vietnamese mole in the South Vietnamese army who is forced to move to the United States near the end of the Vietnam War. He continues to report back to the Viet Cong while staying in a South Vietnamese community during his U.S. exile, all the while struggling to juggle his original loyalties with his new life.

The director was nevertheless careful about maintaining a delicate balance of drama and historical accuracy to depict Vietnamese society in the most truthful way possible, even monitoring the auditions of thousands of people for the series, of which the majority of the dialogue is spoken in Vietnamese.

Robert Downey Jr., left, and Toan Le in their respective roles of FBI agent Claude and the General. Downey plays multiple antagonist roles in "The Sympathizer." [COUPANG PLAY]

“The hardest part of production was the casting,” the director said. “We not only scouted for second generation Vietnamese and Vietnamese actors living abroad in Australia, Canada, England and Asia, but also alerted those in the Vietnamese community who were not actors. We went through countless auditions and I saw thousands of videos.”

In the end, the cast turned out to be a colorful mixture of professional screen actors, small-theatre actors, trainees and individuals of other varying professions. The General is played by Toan Le, who was a former web designer at Disney. The Major is played by Phan Gia Nhat Linh, a renowned Vietnamese film director. It was both of their first times in an acting role, according to Park.

The director also had a leg up in understanding the divided communities within the same nation thanks to his background of growing up in Korea in the 1970s during the Cold War.

“For Koreans, the Cold War is just something we lived through. It’s like air to us. I think I was suited to embody the character of the original work."

Ho Xuande as the Captain in ″The Sympathizer″ [COUPANG PLAY]

His upbringing also gave root to his fascination with the spy thriller genre.

“In my teens I fell in love with the translated version of the novel ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.’ Even at a young age, the act of conspiracy — creating a gigantic lie and designing them in detail so that they would come to life — was fascinating.”

“This disposition of mine may have influenced my decision to become a director. In a way, what a spy master does is similar to what a movie director, or a person who both produces and writes the screenplay, does. They make up lies and make it plausible enough that others will believe them. They score the funds and set up a team to execute the plan, and then choose the actors — the spies — who will front their operations."

"Spies were at their largest during the Cold War. That’s why that period of time is the most fun,” Park said.

Director Park Chan-wook answers questions from reporters for his latest work in ″The Sympathizer.″ Park directed the series' first three episodes and served as its chief showrunner and executive producer. [NEWS1]

It wasn’t just his childhood nostalgia for the spy genre that Park reflected on as he created the show; he also looked back on the golden days of television to plan out the story structure of the series as its chief showrunner, namely leaving viewers with cliff-hangers at critical moments to keep them hooked.

“I strongly urge the viewers to savor each episode and anticipate the next one,” Park said.

“Some might think it's a cheap trick, but I like cliff-hangers. That’s the charm of television.”

The series, which premiered on HBO on April 14 in the United States, is available for streaming in Korea exclusively on Coupang Play. New episodes are uploaded every Monday.

BY KIM JU-YEON [kim.juyeon2@joongang.co.kr]