Park Eun-Bin Talks ‘Spooky In Love,’ KCON And How She Chooses Her Roles

South Korean actress Park Eun-bin had heard of KCON before, but when CJ ENM—the entertainment conglomerate behind the world’s largest annual K-pop and K-culture festival—invited her to attend this year’s event, she wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Although the Spooky in Love star was scheduled to appear on the second day of KCON, she stopped by a day earlier to scope out the festival. “The energy was really, really incredible,” Park says in Korean, pausing mid-sentence to emphasize the fervor of the attendees. We’re chatting on the second day of KCON LA, which was held from August 14-16 at the Los Angeles Convention Center and Crypto.com Arena. Earlier that day, Park appeared at the festival’s “K-Story Zone,” where, as one of KCON LA 2026’s “messengers of K-culture,” she engaged with fans and shared interesting tidbits about her latest series Spooky in Love, which concluded its run on Sunday. “I was amazed because there were so many Westerners sitting there,” she says. “I kept wondering, ‘How do they all know and like me?’ They even had dolls and other things that only my fans would be interested in, so that was fascinating.” Then again, Park probably shouldn’t have been too surprised by the enthusiastic response. A veteran actress who’s appeared in over 60 films and K-dramas, she shot to global stardom with the hit series Extraordinary Attorney Woo, in which she played a brilliant autistic attorney who uses her neurodivergent skills to tackle complex cases. The series became the most watched title on Netflix globally during part of its run and was nominated for an International Emmy and a Critics’ Choice Award. Over the course of her career, Park has gone from being a beloved child actor in classic K-dramas like Glass Slippers and Guardian Angel to one of South Korea’s most recognizable stars. Along the way, she has built a reputation as a remarkably versatile performer, portraying a wide variety of characters such as an attorney on the autism spectrum, an aspiring singer who returns to society after 15 years in Castaway Diva (in which she sang the songs herself), and a woman masquerading as a king in The King’s Affection. How Park Eun-bin chooses her roles—and why ‘Extraordinary Attorney Woo’ was an exception Any one of those unconventional characters might seem like a daunting undertaking to most actors. But Park says she has generally chosen projects that she believed she could handle—and prefers to think of them not as “challenges,” but simply as opportunities to try something new. “If you think, ‘This is a challenge,’ it can feel grand and intimidating,” the 33-year-old actress says. “I didn’t want to shrink or hold myself back at the idea of something being a ‘challenge.’ So I approached things with a more relaxed mindset, and as a result, I think I ended up doing quite a few unusual projects.” She’s quick, however, to point out that Extraordinary Attorney Woo was an exception. “That one really was a challenge! A challenge that I didn’t want to take on,” she says with a laugh. “The script was so good, but I told them I didn’t think I could do it and turned it down twice quite firmly,” she adds. “But the director and writer—both of whom I really trust—told me I didn’t have to shoulder all the responsibility by myself and that they would share some of the weight with me. That gave me courage. And I thought, ‘If somebody has to do this, maybe I should give it a try.’” Though Park has earned acclaim for taking on ambitious and demanding roles in recent years, she’s also mindful of not giving audiences too much of the same thing. “I don’t want people to think that I only like taking on difficult roles,” she says. “I’m always thinking about what I can show people this time that’s different from my previous project. In that sense, I thought Spooky in Love could show a very different side of me from The Wonderfools.” Park Eun-bin on how filming ‘Spooky in Love’ helped her learn more about herself Filming Spooky in Love, Park reveals, took longer than she expected—about seven months for 12 episodes. “In the past, that was about how long it would take to shoot a 16-episode drama,” she shares. “But these days, no matter how many episodes you’re filming, the amount of work that goes into it is about the same, so I think that’s why productions take so long.” Park had also signed on to Spooky in Love expecting it to be a relatively light romantic comedy and was surprised by just how many genre elements and action sequences the series contained. “It ended up being a project with many different aspects to it, so it was harder than I’d anticipated,” she says, laughing. Even after working in the Korean entertainment industry for three decades, Park says that she still learned a lot about herself while filming Spooky in Love, including gaining a better understanding of the kinds of stories she’s drawn to. “I had definitely wanted to do something where romance was the main focus, but this ended up being a series where romance was just one element among many,” she says. “So it made me wonder whether I actually prefer romance that’s woven into a variety of different genres.” Park Eun-bin on portraying the character of Cheon Yeo-ri in ‘Spooky in Love’ Beyond the physical demands of the role, Park also gave careful thought to how she wanted to portray Yeo-ri. In particular, the character’s identity as a chaebol heiress (chaebol is the term for a large family-owned conglomerate in Korea) made Park conscious of avoiding familiar tropes. “There’ve been quite a few memorable female chaebol characters in Korean dramas and the media lately, so I think a certain stereotype has started to form around them in Korea as well,” she says. “So I thought a lot about how to portray her somewhat differently.” Because of what happens when she comes into physical contact with people, Yeo-ri keeps others at a distance and puts up walls around herself. But Park saw an important distinction between Yeo-ri’s outward demeanor and her motivations behind it. “It isn’t because she’s simply cold or has a mean personality,” Park explains. “She has chosen to isolate herself for the sake of other people, and I realized that selflessness was really at the heart of her character.” “We all have many different sides to us,” she continues. “So I thought that if I could show that even though Yeo-ri may appear a certain way on the outside, she’s actually very warmhearted inside, then maybe she would come across as a little less…obnoxious.” (Laughs) ‘Spooky in Love’ is available to stream on Netflix.