Jummy is a Korean actress with a strong but gentle personality, always ready to make her dreams come true with a smile in her eyes.
Seoul, today is a pleasantly warm day in late January, in a winter where it was really very cold. I meet the young actress Jummy who introduces me to her world and the acting one, both completely new to me.
“I was born in Ulsan, a city in the south-east of the Korean peninsula. At the age of 12, I moved with my family for 4 years to live in the Netherlands. My father used to work for Hyundai Heavy Industries, one of the largest shipbuilding construction companies in the world and at the time he was the general manager of the European branch located in the pleasant and quiet Rotterdam. Work kept him very busy, but on weekends he always took us to explore new places. We did many road trips around Europe.
At the age of 16, I returned here to South Korea: I remember that the biggest trouble was the difference in the rhythms that are here at school, much more stressful than in Europe. At the age of 12 in my country students start with exams and other heavy school duties that keep us bent over our books all day to study. In Holland it was much calmer, much more relaxed, I had much more time for myself and for going out with friends.
My parents did not want me to forget the English I had learned in the past years in Europe, they considered this language very important for my future, especially at a working level. So they enrolled me in an international school in Busan, where I stayed for 3 years.
My life is rather nomadic!”
A life that allowed Jummy to develop a personal mindset and her own way of perceiving life, completely outside the narrow schemes of Korean society.
“Once I finished high school I had to decide what to do: I applied to various colleges and universities in Seoul, the two faculties that accepted me were the one of journalism and mass communication and the one of international relations. The latter option represented the most typical path for me and for students studying English language. But being accepted at the other college also triggered something inside me. I like changes, new challenges, different experiences and I decided to try this new educational path, finding myself studying something completely new.” This is something that can definitely be perceived while you are in the presence of this bright-eyed energetic lady with her determined gaze full of vitality.
“My life changed once again: I came to live in Seoul, in a completely different cultural climate than the one in which I had always lived before, especially as regards friendships and my college classmates: a quite different mindset from that I had always been in an international environment with Western influences, even here in South Korea, now I found myself living in the real Korean culture, which I was not used to! I practically experienced a culture shock in my own country. It was not entirely easy, I remained silent and a bit on the sidelines, a ploy adopted in self-defense. I had to create a protective barrier, put up some boundaries for nobody to pass, or they would have pushed me around.
Of course, I couldn’t just stay at a safe distance, I also had to find a way to interact and integrate more into the new environment. I found the right opportunity to change a few things thanks to one of the extracurricular activities organized in college days: there were some clubs I could join, the most famous were those of video, photography and, last but not least, the theater one. When I was in Holland I had attended some acting lessons and remembering the experience as something pleasant, I chose to join the drama club.
I was already on stage, why not try it again? And this is where it all began, it was like a spark that lit up my future.
I remember the first character I played, it was in a traditional Korean comedy centered on clashes of social classes. The first show lasted about an hour and a half, which was quite demanding, but people still liked it a lot. Even if it was a small part, the idea that I could become an actress began to flash in my head.
I thought: I have a talent!
One of the projects we all had to develop during the college years was to write a script and create a video where it was interpreted using actors, we helped each other and we all participated in the creation of the video works of each of us students. So I often found myself acting in the movies of my college friends. This helped me to gain confidence in being in front of the camera. It was fun, something new and exciting. I was shy at first, but this experience helped me a lot to open up … it’s been about 10 years since then.
At the time, I experienced first hand that maintaining relationships is really challenging. All these creative processes often created conflicts between actors and directors of the short films. And sometimes they led to divisions. I learned the importance of respecting others and their creative ideas, which has served me a lot for my current career: listening and trying to fully understand what directors want is fundamental in my profession.
In 2016, just before I finished college, driven by the various experiences I had had over the last few years, I decided I wanted to become a full-time actress. At first, I was hesitant, every day I had in mind this idea of changing my life, but before stating clearly to myself that this was a dream to try to realize I spent a long time thinking and rethinking, it took me about 3 years to make a final decision.
It was just a hobby at the beginning, but it soon turned into an experience that awakened something inside me. My initial idea was to make a lot of money with a normal job, but my passion and not wanting to have regrets for the rest of my life for not trying made me change my mind.
I started thinking about what would happen after I graduated: writing resumes, sending them to hundreds of companies and having as many job interviews…I didn’t like the idea. But when I imagined doing the same thing by creating my actress portfolio and participating in millions of auditions…the idea appealed to me! I thus came to the conclusion that I would try an acting career for 2 years and see what would happen, in the worst case I would retrace my steps and start a more common profession related to what I had studied previously: I could always become or interpreter, or translator or video editor… So I decided to invest a couple of years of my life in acting and if I didn’t see a future I would have stopped. “ Fortunately, everything went well for Jummy!
“The next step was to find a place to learn, practice and perfect my skills for my new career. I didn’t want to enroll in a business school, luckily a college colleague of mine had started, since a couple of years, a theater company in the Hewa area, considered the mecca for theater in Seoul … it was just what I was looking for! So I asked her to be accepted, I’m willing to do anything I told her! And so she allowed me to join.
Again I was in the midst of new people, but this time the difference was more than positive, this time it was all about sharing. A process that taught me to show who I am without hiding, essential for when an actor is on stage. If you are unsure of yourself and you don’t show who you really are, your character is also not real, if you hide it is difficult to be on stage.
The creative process by which our scripts for our shows were written and developed was based on the exchange of our life experiences, emotions and ideas. We talked, argued and debated all day. A sort of brainstorming to develop the story that we would have interpreted on the stage. This is very useful for making our characters much more realistic. It was a process of inner discovery, where we saw the good and darker side of ourselves.
I spent two and a half years in this theater company, before embarking on a new individual career. It was about 3 years ago when I started auditioning for new roles, I had never done any before. I created a portfolio with my works and started showing up around as an actress in short independent films and commercials. It was quite a different world than that of the theater.
My first role was in a student short film project, I was hired as a cafe owner. I moved on to playing a few roles in some commercials and then in some other films, sometimes I was just part of the staff in the production.
And so I began to get serious in my career in the film industry.
I’m not a famous actress, I don’t have a name in this world yet, but I’m still doing well! We have a term by which we define actors and actresses who are not yet famous in South Korea: 무명 mumyeong, a “no name”…is one of the initial steps from which to start my career and is the stage where I am now. There is a misinterpretation of being a “no name”, people think that who at this point in their career is with no money, in a difficult financial condition, they think that we do not eat and live under a bridge…it’s just a stereotype. Just because we are not famous yet they think we are poor.”
I see Jummy full of energies, super positive, it seems that she has never had stress or particular insurmountable difficulties, as if her life had always been not too difficult for her.
“I was probably so excited by what was happening around me that I didn’t notice the negative sides of life, I always try to focus on what is positive. I have always been happy, I have had difficult moments, but not too heavy to pull me down.
The first year after I graduated I had some financial difficulties, I didn’t want to ask my parents for money or call them to complain, I spent all my savings and started with part-time jobs, I did it all by myself.
My parents are still processing my decision to be an actress, they are always quite worried about my future, also because I don’t have a definite career yet. But little by little they are dealing with it in a good way.
Acting is a never-ending process of personal discovery, and it’s what I enjoy most about this career. Something that I don’t learn from a book or a school, but from experience, acting represents life itself for me. All the emotions of my characters that I play and like they are teaching me something, I am learning a lot from them. They teach me to know myself, to explore my inner emotions and thoughts. A process that fascinates me. Studying how to play a character who has different emotions and feelings than mine makes me explore these new opportunities and interpretations of life. Like when a director gives me a new role and I have to decide and think about all the possibilities of playing that character, it’s really something that teaches me a lot.
For now, I have reached a 5-year career. I am satisfied and happy and I see that what I’m doing is leading to tangible results.
I’m doing new auditions for commercial films, big productions. I have two films for this year, for now I am waiting and in the meantime, I’m studying and learning. I’m trying to improve my approach to auditioning for these commercial films, which are completely different and more challenging than those of independent films. They are much colder, they don’t even look you in the face when they are examining you, all of which involves much more stress. I’m trying to figure out how to control the situation more and how to keep my emotions at bay so as not to let the situation get out of hand, look for a way to relax in these moments. It’s hard to understand what the examiners are thinking, certainly some sort of strategy to see how we actors react to stress.
I spend a lot of time thinking and analyzing: at the end of the day I stop and look back at what happened. How do I feel? How did it go? An introspective process of daily analysis. I do it every day, to understand what worked and what could have been better. I’m always looking for a personal balance.”
Jummy is confident, determined and her firm gaze let me glimpse the tenacious and daring introspective side of her, ready to fight for what she wants. Making me sure that the today “no name” will find an important name, soon.
