Before Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning thriller Parasite, chances are the name Song Kang-ho didn’t mean much to the Western film-going public. Despite a three-decade career that had seen him scoop multiple awards in Asia, it wasn’t until Joon-ho’s 2019 masterpiece cut through the cultural divide that Hollywood began to sit up and take notice.

And take notice they did. In the last four years, Kang-ho has taken home the award for Best Actor at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival for his leading role in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker, been ranked the sixth greatest actor of the century by the New York Times and delivered career-defining performances in Memories of Murder and The Host. Alongside actors like Lee Byung-hun (Squid Game), Bae Doona (Sense8) and Youn Yuh-jung (Minari), who have been thrust into the spotlight thanks to the soaring popularity of K-dramas, Song Kang-ho is taking the world by storm as one of the leading figures of New Korean cinema.

We’re meeting to discuss Kang-ho’s latest project, as the lead in Kim Jee-woon’s Cobweb, which held its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2023. The meta-comedy centres around film director Kim Yeol (played by Kang-ho) who becomes obsessed with re-shooting the ending of his movie, Cobweb. Chaos ensues as he comes up against strict censorship regulations, the personal affairs of actors and his own ego.

Describing his character as both “confident” and “self-destructive”, Kang-ho admits to being drawn to the film through a personal identification with the role. “The character is similar to the real me,” he says. “Sometimes I like my acting but other times I get caught up in an inferiority complex. My image was reflected in the character and I liked how it dealt with the agony of an artist.”

It’s a refreshing admission from an acting veteran with Kang-ho’s level of experience – and he goes on to explain that there are no “special methods” for dealing with this imposter syndrome other than to face it head-on. “I am only human, so there are times when I feel insecure about my acting. However, rather than looking for the cause of my anxiety externally, I tend to find the cause internally and overcome it.”

It helps, one suspects, that Kang-ho is adamant about giving his everything to a role; pouring his heart and soul into every character he plays and leaving everything on tape. Unlike his Cobweb character, who is psychologically consumed with perfecting his artistic expression, he says he has never found a role difficult to shake off because he never leaves with any regrets.

Set in the movie-making world of the 1970s, one of the starkest observations made in Cobweb is just how much the film industry has changed over the past 50 years. One of the major differences, of course, is the advent of streaming services, which have transformed the way people consume content.

Like most actors who grew up dreaming of silver screen success, when pressed, Kang-ho says he appreciates both mediums but still believes in the power of the cinema. “Cobweb will be a welcome opportunity for theatregoers to truly feel cinematic energy. Feeling the atmosphere of the movie theatre, experiencing the sound with your body, and empathising with other moviegoers watching the movie in the same space.”

His love of the cinema is perhaps unsurprising given the box office success of Parasite, which was seen in the theatre by nearly a fifth of the population in Kang-ho’s native South Korea and broke records for non-English language film screenings across the globe. Released in the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many were still cautious about being inside with strangers, Parasite proved that great filmmaking could still draw crowds and propelled Kang-ho and his cast mates to international stardom.

“The success of Parasite served as a stepping stone for audiences around the world to easily access not only Korean films but also other Asian and non-English language films,” says Kang-ho of Parasite’s history-making Oscars win, becoming the first non-English language film to scoop Best Picture in 2020. “When director Bong Joon-ho gave his acceptance speech he said, ‘Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.’”

Joon-ho wasn’t wrong: along with K-pop and K-beauty, the popularity for all things Korean TV and film has exploded over the last few years. And, while Kang-ho describes the spotlight on Korean cinema as “burdensome”, he also feels patriotic and incredibly proud of the attention it is now getting. “Korean cinema has always been ready to receive attention,” he explains, noting that the globalisation of Korean cinema is long overdue and that it has been responsible for some of the most innovative and exciting movies of recent years, from The Handmaiden to Old Boy.

Despite the new worldwide attention on his career, and Korean cinema more generally, Kang-ho maintains that nothing has changed in his approach to acting or the roles he takes. “An actor's attitude when choosing a project should always be progressive and adventurous,” he says. “In that sense, I try to choose works that can take at least one step forward, even if it is not ten steps, and I will continue to do so.”

Cobweb is screening at BFI London Film Festival from 13-14 October 2023. Tickets here.

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