Ha Ji-won for High Cut

Ha Ji-won‘s a busy girl these days, between her drama The King 2 Hearts and running around all over the place to promote her new sports movie Korea / As One. Here she is inHigh Cut as “The Queen,” looking very different from both her roles.

It’s interesting that she has two concurrent projects that deal with North/South Korean relationships, though in totally different ways. In Korea she plays South Korean table tennis champion Hyun Jung-hwa, in a true-to-life portrayal of the joint North-South team who competed together in the ’91 World Championships. In the interview with High Cut she talks about hearing the North Korean athletes’ dialect over and over.

And then later, she took on the role of Kim Hang-ah, where she had to adopt a northern dialect herself. She’s been universally praised for her accent, which she explains is adopted from junior high and high school students in Pyongyang. Well that would explain the cutesy, which is often times a little overkill for my taste, but it fits the character fine, and is far more pleasant to listen to for 20 episodes than say, the harsh newscaster version. I just appreciate the lilty quality that makes everything she says sound pretty, and of course how well she enunciates.

Korea opens next week, and The King 2 Hearts airs Wednesday-Thursday on MBC.

Via Sports Chosun