11 hours ago
Why Seo Kang-joon Refuses to Make Romance His Entire World / ELLE
In a new ELLE Korea interview, the Love Beyond Us actor explained why genuine love requires a strong sense of self and how his latest role left him emotionally exhausted.
Seo Kang-joon has offered a thoughtful definition of love that challenges one of romance’s most familiar ideas.
A partner can be deeply important. Love can require sacrifice. But another person should never become the entire reason for someone’s existence.
The actor shared this perspective in an interview accompanying his October pictorial for ELLE Korea. His comments arrived as he continues to appear in the drama Love Beyond Us, where he plays Namgoong-ho, a gentle boyfriend whose seemingly steady personality conceals considerable anxiety.
For Seo, the experience of playing Namgoong-ho did more than demand an emotional performance. It also pushed him to reconsider what it means to love someone without abandoning yourself.
Why Seo Kang-joon Refuses to Make Romance His Entire World / ELLESeo Kang-joon’s Definition of a Healthy Relationship
Seo Kang-joon believes that a person must first be able to stand firmly on their own before they can properly love somebody else.
He acknowledged that sacrifice can be part of a relationship. His boundary, however, is clear: love should not consume a person’s identity or replace the life they have built for themselves.
In his view, making a partner the sole reason for living does not create stronger love. It creates a relationship in which one person’s sense of self becomes dependent on the other.
Maintaining an independent life is therefore not a sign of emotional distance. It is what allows two people to meet each other as complete individuals.
That distinction gives his comments more weight than conventional celebrity relationship advice. Seo is not arguing against devotion. He is separating devotion from self-erasure.
His philosophy can be summarized simply: love deeply, make sacrifices when necessary, but do not disappear inside the relationship.
Love Beyond Us Left Him Emotionally Exhausted
Seo Kang-joon’s thoughts on love emerged from an unusually demanding acting experience.
In Love Beyond Us, he plays Namgoong-ho, a man who appears considerate, disciplined and sincere. He respects boundaries and presents himself as someone capable of providing stability. Seo, however, did not want the character to feel perfect.
He wanted viewers to sense the instability beneath Namgoong-ho’s calm exterior.
The actor described the character as someone living an uncertain life while carrying private anxiety. That contradiction became essential to his performance. Namgoong-ho needed to look emotionally dependable while quietly struggling to preserve his own balance.
Understanding those conflicting emotions required Seo to draw heavily from himself. He said that he consumed a significant amount of his own emotional energy while trying to understand Namgoong-ho and Mido, then translate their inner conditions into performance.
After filming, he experienced something close to complete exhaustion. He had poured out so much emotion that he was left dealing with the emptiness that followed.
This makes his relationship philosophy feel particularly connected to the drama. Both the actor and his character are confronting the same question from different directions: How much of yourself can you give to another person without losing the foundation that keeps you standing?
Namgoong-ho Is More Complicated Than the “Perfect Boyfriend”
Seo Kang-joon has often played characters whose polished appearances conceal emotional distance, loneliness or pain. Namgoong-ho continues that pattern, but with a meaningful difference.
His conflict does not appear to come from a lack of sincerity. He genuinely wants to be a good partner. The tension comes from whether sincerity alone is enough when a person’s own life remains unstable.
By emphasizing Namgoong-ho’s anxiety, Seo avoids turning him into a simple romantic fantasy. His kindness can coexist with fear. His discipline can hide uncertainty. His desire to protect a relationship can become harder to sustain when his own emotional foundation begins to weaken.
That complexity is also reflected in the ELLE pictorial.
Created around the concept “OFF DUTY,” the shoot places Seo’s neat, composed public image against a more tense atmosphere. Restrained expressions and styling that moves between boyishness and maturity capture the same contrast he sought in Namgoong-ho.
The result is not merely a handsome celebrity photoshoot. It becomes a visual extension of the character he has been exploring: controlled on the surface, unsettled underneath.
Why Seo Kang-joon Refuses to Make Romance His Entire World / ELLEWhy Seo Kang-joon Does Not Run From Emptiness
Many people treat loneliness and emptiness as problems that must be solved as quickly as possible. Seo Kang-joon approaches them differently.
Rather than setting a single grand goal for his life, he focuses on completing what he can do in the present. When emptiness arrives, he tries to use it as an opportunity to examine himself more honestly.
He described such moments as valuable because they allow him to encounter his real self.
That outlook explains why he does not believe happiness and pleasure are the only emotions that give life meaning. Solitude, loneliness and emptiness are also part of a full life. They may be uncomfortable, but they can reveal parts of a person that remain hidden during easier periods.
This perspective also strengthens his view of romantic relationships. If a person immediately relies on a partner to fill every empty space, they may never learn what that emptiness is trying to show them.
Seo’s answer is not isolation. It is self-awareness.
What Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha Reveals About His Outlook
During the interview, Seo Kang-joon mentioned Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha while discussing the process of exploring his inner life.
The reference is revealing.
Siddhartha follows a man who discovers that understanding cannot simply be borrowed from teachers or received as a finished answer. It must be reached through personal experience, failure, solitude and reflection.
Seo appears to approach acting in a similar way. A character cannot be understood only through dialogue or external description. He must enter that person’s emotional contradictions and discover what remains unspoken.
That process can be draining, as Love Beyond Us demonstrated. It can also provide the kind of internal examination that Seo considers essential to both his work and his life.
His Next Acting Challenge Is to Show More by Doing Less
Seo Kang-joon is currently thinking about two seemingly opposite goals as an actor.
He wants to expand his ability to express emotion and move beyond his current limitations. At the same time, he wants to remove unnecessary expression and communicate without directly displaying every feeling.
These goals are not as contradictory as they initially sound.
Greater emotional range does not always require a louder performance. Sometimes it gives an actor the confidence to hold something back, allowing viewers to sense what the character cannot say.
For Seo, the next stage of acting appears to be less about proving how much emotion he can show and more about controlling how much the audience needs to see.
That balance mirrors his philosophy of love.
A meaningful relationship requires emotional commitment, but it also requires boundaries. A compelling performance requires expression, but it also needs restraint. In both cases, depth comes from giving something of yourself without surrendering all of it.
Seo Kang-joon’s complete pictorial and interview are available in ELLE Korea’s October issue, with additional video content scheduled to be released through ELLE Korea’s YouTube channel.
English (US) · 
Indonesian (ID) ·