With the occasional crossover and familiar cast members, the Korean film and TV industry can feel like a small world. Nothing might typify this better than a movie jam-packed with the Hallyu world’s most famous names–which, at least for one case, can actually be a controversial piece!
LOOK: Famous Korean Actors Who Had Their Start in the Controversial Movie “A Frozen Flower”
Boasting an impressive lineup of Korean actors before their fame, 2008’s A Frozen Flower looks like the perfect peek at the Hallyu scene today. The film, released in December of that year, included K-favorite Song Joong Ki, years before his claim to fame in K-dramas like Descendants of the Sun and Vincenzo. He played the soldier No Tak, who, despite his small screen time, proved to be a fulfilling debut for Joong Ki, according to a previous interview.
Joining the pre-fame cameos were two cast members from The Glory, decades prior to their appearance in the much-talked-about Netflix drama. Jung Sung Il—who has also starred in Our Blues and Bad and Crazy—is credited in A Frozen Flower as one of the Gunroyng corps.
Meanwhile, his fellow The Glory star Park Sung Hoon also played a royal guard in the 2008 film.
As a former child actor, Hotel Del Luna’s Yeo Jin Goo has portrayed several younger versions of characters since his run. A Frozen Flower is marked as one of his starting points, when the then-11-year-old actor played the younger Hong Rim, who is later portrayed by Zo In Sung as an adult.
But despite being labeled as the sixth most attended film of that year, A Frozen Flower actually had a cloud of controversies hovering over its reputation. Starting from its genre, the erotic historical film centered on a love triangle between the military commander Hong Rim, and the monarchs played by Joo Jin Mo and Song Ji Hyo. Desperate for an heir, the king ordered the commander to father a child with the queen, which later on develops into a full-fledged affair.
The movie consisted of several explicit scenes and homoerotic themes, which led critics to raise their “concerns” regarding eroticism as a film motif that grew in popularity at the time of release. However, according to a previous report, A Frozen Flower’s director Yoo Ha had deliberately pushed the envelope, saying that “provocative scenes were inevitable,” due to the film’s focus on physical love.
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