How Roh Yoon-seo portrays a power that’s both a blessing and a curse

MANILA, Philippines — In Netflix’s supernatural period series “The East Palace,” South Korean star Roh Yoon-seo plays a woman born with an extraordinary ability.

She stars as Saeng-gang, a former court lady who can hear the voices of the dead. She joins Gu-cheon, played by comebacking actor Nam Joo-hyuk, in investigating the dark forces and long-buried secrets haunting the royal palace.

The series recently rose to No. 1 on Netflix’s daily series chart in the Philippines, introducing viewers to a darker and more fantastical side of Roh, who is best known for the lighter fare “Crash Course in Romance” and “20th Century Girl.”

While Saeng-gang’s supernatural sensitivity eventually becomes essential to their mission, Roh said her character initially sees the ability not as a blessing but as a curse.

During a virtual roundtable with select Filipino reporters, including The Philippine STAR, Roh was asked how she approached the portrayal of someone who had lived with this ability since childhood.

The actress said she focused on the emotional wounds that Saeng-gang carried after being rejected because of her power.

Roh as Saeng-gang, a former court lady who can hear the voices of the dead. She joins Gu-cheon, played by comebacking actor Nam Joo-hyuk, in investigating the dark forces and long-buried secrets haunting the royal palace.

“Saeng-gang is a character who was driven out of the palace because of her ability to hear spirits,” Roh said through an interpreter.

“I thought that because of that painful experience, she thinks hearing the spirits is a curse. She is someone who lives with the pain, thinking that everything happened because of her.”

Roh imagined that Saeng-gang would spend her years away from the palace trying to shut out the very voices she is naturally capable of hearing.

“Because there is so much intense energy within the palace, I thought that during her life outside the palace, she was probably always someone who shut her ears and didn’t listen because of what that had previously caused her,” she explained.

However, her return to the palace forces Saeng-gang to confront both her ability and the painful memories attached to it after trying to suppress them.

“There’s a scene where she is trying to overcome the fear that she has struggled with for so long because she now wants to hear the voices again,” Roh said.

“When I was doing that scene, I remember thinking about all of the accumulated time and emotions that she must have gone through before that moment.”

The scene marks a turning point for Saeng-gang as she begins to reclaim an ability she had long blamed for her suffering. She gradually discovers that it can also be used to protect others and help restless souls move on.

As the series largely explores the theme of unfinished business and unresolved resentment, The STAR had to ask Roh whether she believes the past can continue to haunt people when they fail to confront it.

For the actress, the answer depends on whether revisiting the past can genuinely lead to resolution.

“I think if it’s a part of the past that you feel needs to be dealt with and resolved, then it is right to revisit that,” she said.

“However, if it’s something that’s just eating away at you, something that is haunting you, then I think the better direction is to forget about it and move on.”

Asked whether she drew from Korean folklore, shamanistic practices or beliefs about communicating with the afterlife to better ease into her character, Roh said she didn’t refer to anything specific outside the script.

Instead, she concentrated on the character’s personal history and worked closely with the production team to determine how an invisible sound could be translated visually on screen.

“I did think about how she was going to hear these voices and how that was going to come across on screen,” Roh said. “That was actually a very close collaboration between me and the camera work.”

The camera movements were designed to reflect the changing proximity and intensity of the voices reaching Saeng-gang.

“When the sounds reached her, the camera would also reach the character from a certain distance,” she explained. “And when the camera was moving away from her, that’s when she would hear less of the voices. So, it involved working closely with the camera.”

“The East Palace” also draws many of its spirits and supernatural creatures from traditional Korean myths.

“A lot of them come from traditional Korean myths, so they’re going to be something that you’ve never seen before,” she said.

“There are certain spirits who have names that I know I heard from somewhere but couldn’t really pinpoint from where. I was really excited to see how they were going to be visualized on screen.”

Meanwhile, Roh was asked which ability she would personally choose — seeing or hearing spirits. In response, she recalled an interview she had watched with someone who claimed to possess both.

According to the person, seeing spirits was easier to endure because one could still look away. Hearing them, however, was much harder to escape.

“When you hear them, that’s when it gets really scary,” Roh said. “When you hear a little baby spirit laugh in the middle of the night, it will wake you up and scare you to your wits’ end.”

“If you see it, I think you can kind of try to block it away, but hearing — you can’t run from that. So, I think seeing is the better of the two,” she quipped.

“The East Palace” is streaming on Netflix.