By Oh Young-jin
It turned out to be a game of hide and seek.
A group of three reporters asked all kinds of questions to force her to reveal her true color.
She avoided few questions but didn’t really give herself away either.
In hindsight, I felt I fell for her and became an “accomplice” sabotaging our own mission.
I betrayed my two other colleagues. I wasn’t sure they didn’t do the same.
At the end of an interview with singer-cum-actress Lee Jung-hyun, I came to know little more than I already knew about her.
When I arrived at the newsroom at a bit past 1 p.m. Wednesday, the interview was already under way in our small studio. Besides the two reporters, a video cameraman and a still photographer were also at work. I stepped inside and thrust my hand to her for a handshake.
She took it with a soft grasp. It didn’t match the level of strength I had expected from the power dancer she is known to be.
Momentarily I suspected she didn’t give it her full strength because she feared it would surprise me, if she did.
Or she may have chosen to play her Barbie doll role to throw me off from our mission.
Barbie was least expected because she are often associated with tough images for her roles such as space Amazon, concubine femme fatale and zombie bride, which is the theme of her latest comeback song, “V.”
More surprising was that Lee appeared to be closer to the Barbie than Amazon.
That threw me off balance.
“What is the source of your strength?” I uttered, when I really wanted to ask her to “Drop all your pretenses and show your true colors.”
“I am much stronger than I look. I rarely catch a cold,” she answered kindly but half of me felt ignored.
Then, she raised her left arm in an apparent attempt to show her biceps. She didn’t have them but her arm was thin but seemed to be healthy.
Still I was amazed by her own self-contradiction: the girl, I should say a woman, of her “tiny” physique commanding such a dominant presence.
Hers was a remarkable case of being larger than life.
“I have lost weight while preparing for her special album,” she added.
Instantly I wondered where she could lose more weight. If somebody asked me whether I was envious as a “man of weight,” I would deny it.
Our hide-and-seek game was going nowhere with Lee using self-discipline to respond to our questions with short answers. She had her sheepish smile on her face and managed to prevent us from going cranky.
Then, one of my colleagues accidentally talked about her being relegated to the league of “old generation” stars in the K-pop arena where teens belong to the median-age group.
“You are so cruel,” she blurted but still maintaining her trademark smile on her face. She made her film debut at age 16 and this year is her 17th in her career.
Seeing an opening, the same reporter pressed on by asking her to give “idols’ a piece of advice. Obviously, she felt her age again. She protested with her nasal voice. .
Then, we turned to the issue of loneliness, asking her how to cope with a severe case of it.
Her self-protection system fell at once, when she admitted she felt lonely sometimes and wanted to date and marry. It was three years ago that she regularly dated for the last time, she said.
She said she would not mind marrying somebody who is not Korean, if she loves him.
I was not sure that was a Lee Jung-hyun I was looking for at the start of the interview but, even if it was not, I had few regrets. It was an hour well spent.