๐ญ The Word That Outlasted Every Trophy — Woody Magazine, May. 12, 2026
The 62nd Baeksang Arts Awards — Korea's annual recognition of film, television, theater, and, this year for the first time, musical theater — drew to a close at Seoul's COEX exhibition hall on the night of May 8. The longest-lingering moment wasn't a trophy, a record, or a tearful acceptance. It was a single word. Jochiwon.
The night's two grand prizes went to actors whose paths had crossed once before, in a place no one in the COEX ballroom would have guessed. Accepting the Best Drama Grand Prize for the JTBC series Kim Bujang — a satire about a middle-aged middle-manager whose Seoul-owned home and corporate title slowly fall away — Ryu Seung-ryong opened his speech by turning to face Yoo Hae-jin, who, an hour earlier, had taken the film equivalent.
"I'm thinking of thirty years ago. Hae-jin and I were putting up posters together for a play at La MaMa in New York. And working a month-long shift at a bidet factory in Jochiwon. Neither of us imagined we'd both be standing here tonight."
— Ryu Seung-ryong, Best Drama Grand Prize acceptance speechThe two men are exact contemporaries: both born in 1970, both graduates of the Seoul Institute of the Arts. One night in the mid-1990s — they were in their mid-twenties — a stranger overheard them drinking and asked, by Ryu's later account, if they wanted to make some quick money. They got into his car before dawn.
Where the car stopped was a bidet assembly plant in Jochiwon, a small industrial town about a hundred kilometers south of Seoul. For a month, they shared a rented room and put together toilet seats. Around the same period, the two were also part of a Korean experimental theater company invited to stage a piece called Du-ta at La MaMa, Manhattan's storied off-off-Broadway laboratory. They put up their own posters around the East Village. They called each other "President Yoo" and "CEO Ryu."
On the same stage three decades later, accepting the Best Film Grand Prize, Yoo Hae-jin reached back to that time. "When I left theater for film, I just wanted to make a living," he said. "Eventually they gave me a Best Supporting Actor award. I told myself if I could keep acting until forty-five, that would be enough. That's long behind me now." Yoo had a relatively late film debut — 1997's Blackjack — and at one point in his early career he had drawn a line at thirty-five. The turning point came in 2005 with The King and the Clown. Five ten-million-ticket blockbusters followed. The Man Who Lives with the King, the film that brought him to the Baeksang stage this year, has drawn close to 17 million viewers — in a country of 52 million.
Then he invoked a name.
"The late Ahn Sung-ki once said: how hard you work when you're acting is obvious. What matters is how you live when you're not. I've kept that line in my head ever since. I'd like to dedicate this to him."
— Yoo Hae-jin, Best Film Grand Prize acceptance speechAhn Sung-ki, who died in 2022, was something close to Korean cinema's resident patriarch — a star since childhood, beloved across generations. The line carries its weight because both men spent thirty years living inside its answer. In his lean years, Yoo walked the mountains and read at the Namsan Public Library in central Seoul. The day he was offered the bidet factory shift, he was buying bread at a bakery. He called Ryu to come along. That was the kind of stretch they were in.
Ryu, between roles, took whatever came up — deliveries, car washes, anything. Traction came for both men between 1997 and 1998. Yoo debuted on film in Blackjack. Ryu joined the founding cast of Nanta — Korea's now globally toured non-verbal percussion piece, set in a restaurant kitchen — and stayed for five years. When a Nanta troupe took the Baeksang stage this year as part of the ceremony's tribute act, Ryu said he wept watching them. "It brought my younger self back."
Ryu's film record carries its own weight: Miracle in Cell No. 7, Masquerade, The Admiral: Roaring Currents, Extreme Job — four films, each crossing 10 million tickets. His pivot back to television, with Kim Bujang, paid off this year. His character's first name, Nak-su, is also a Korean word meaning falling water. On stage, Ryu read his own role back to himself:
"I used to think nak-su meant water that falls and ends there. But it turns out the water keeps flowing. It becomes a stream. A river. The sea."
— Ryu Seung-ryong, on the meaning of his character's nameAnd before he stepped off, looking at no one in particular, he added a line to himself: "Seung-ryong, well done. To every nak-su in this country — be well."
The morning after the ceremony, Ryu posted a single photo of himself with Yoo to social media. The caption was two words. Bidet Duo.
Thirty years on, this is how they reach back. Which is why, in the days after Korea's biggest awards night of the year, the word that lingered longest wasn't a film title, or "grand prize," or "17 million tickets." It was the name of a small town where two young men once spent a month making toilet seats together.
- 「Source ↗」 Wikitree — Bidet factory anecdote at 62nd Baeksang (May 9, 2026)
- 「Source ↗」 Money Today — Yoo and Ryu both win Baeksang Grand Prizes (May 9, 2026)
- 「Source ↗」 Munhwa Ilbo — Thirty-year friendship, dual Grand Prizes (May 10, 2026)
- 「Source ↗」 Top Star News — Yoo's full speech, Ahn Sung-ki quote (May 12, 2026)
- 「Source ↗」 Ilgan Sports — Ryu's "Bidet Duo" SNS post (May 9, 2026)
- 「Source ↗」 Hankyung — Ryu's bidet factory, deliveries, car washes interview (Nov 15, 2021)
- 「Source ↗」 OhmyStar — Ryu's five years with Nanta (Oct 14, 2017)
- 「Source ↗」 Segye Ilbo — Yoo Hae-jin's debut and early-career notes (Feb 23, 2026)
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