Choo Young-woo And Kim So-hyun On The Chemistry Behind Between Steps

They joked about having “well-matched faces.” They teased each other about who was really the senior on set. But beneath the easy banter at the show’s production press conference, Choo Young-woo and Kim So-hyun were carrying something heavier the knowledge that Between Steps is the final work of a director who will never see it air.

Between Steps poster / ENA

The Chemistry They’re Selling

On October 1 at CGV Yongsan I-Park Mall in Seoul, the cast of ENA’s new Monday-Tuesday drama Between Steps (written by Min Hyo-jung, directed by Ahn Pan-seok) gathered to introduce a romance built on an unusually grounded premise.

The series follows Park Min-jae (Choo Young-woo), a former high-school swimmer who lost one leg to illness and went on to pursue a doctorate, and Im Yoo-jin (Kim So-hyun), a master’s student who drifted after losing her sense of direction before setting out on a fresh path. With both leads born in 1999, their same-age chemistry has emerged as a key ingredient in the drama’s appeal.

Kim So-hyun posing on stage / News 1

Kim leaned into that dynamic. “This is my first time playing opposite a character who’s exactly my age,” she recalled. “I thought it’d be comfortable, but early on Choo Young-woo kept calling me ‘sunbae’ and using formal speech, so a certain distance stayed between us.” She credited his trend-savvy sensibility with eventually bridging the gap: “Choo Young-woo is so trendy, isn’t he? As time passed and we talked about social media and what’s popular, the conversation really flowed. We thought hard about showing a couple that isn’t clichéd something only we could show.”

Choo returned the admiration and the humor. “We’re the same age, but Kim So-hyun is a senior by a long shot,” he said, praising how much he learned from her composure on set. “She was always more mature than me, so I learned a lot. Using formal speech until the middle of filming actually helped my performance, given the drama’s timeline. After that we got close, dropped the formalities, and now we’re jjin-chin real best friends.” Then came the line that drew the biggest laugh: “Our comedy codes are similar and neither of us is showy, so the chemistry clicks. And I think our faces match pretty well too.”

Why This Pairing Matters

For global readers, it’s worth understanding what each actor brings. Kim So-hyun is one of Korea’s most seasoned young leads a former child actress who grew into leading roles across a remarkably wide range, from the youth drama Who Are You: School 2015 and the fantasy romance Love Alarm to the sweeping historical melodrama River Where the Moon Rises and, more recently, the action-comedy Good Boy. Despite being the same age as her co-star, she carries nearly two decades of on-set experience which is exactly why Choo’s “senior by a long shot” framing isn’t just politeness.

Choo Young-woo, meanwhile, is a rising talent on a steep upward trajectory, the kind of actor a project like this is designed to elevate. Pairing an industry veteran-in-a-young-body with a fresh ascendant face is a deliberate contrast and, if the press conference is any indication, a genuinely warm one.

Choo Young-woo making hearts on stage / News 1

The Loss That Shadows the Premiere

Here is the context that transforms Between Steps from a routine romance into something quietly momentous. The drama is the final project of director Ahn Pan-seok, who passed away on August 12, 2026, after a long illness.

Ahn was no ordinary director. For decades he was regarded as one of Korea’s most meticulous and emotionally truthful storytellers a filmmaker who prized the texture of real human feeling over melodramatic shortcuts. At the press conference, Kim So-hyun’s tribute captured why he commanded such respect: “He was very meticulous in his calculations. He calculated how to present things to the audience, but always emphasized truth within that framework.” That tension precise craft in service of genuine emotion was Ahn’s signature, and it’s the lens through which Between Steps now asks to be watched.

There’s a bittersweet resonance in his final story being this one: a romance about two people who each lost a version of their future — an athlete’s body, a planned career and found a new path, and each other, anyway. For a director saying goodbye, it’s hard to imagine a more fitting last note.

The Takeaway

Between Steps premieres October 5 at 10 PM on ENA. On its surface, it offers exactly what its stars promised: a fresh, un-clichéd romance with real chemistry and a setting K-dramas rarely explore. But it arrives carrying more weight than most premieres a final gift from a master storyteller, performed by two actors who clearly understood what they were part of. When it airs, audiences won’t just be watching a love story. They’ll be watching Ahn Pan-seok take his last bow, and a new on-screen partnership take its first. Both deserve to be seen.