"Manly Chang Dong-gun Is My Favorite Actor"

Peipei, 23, will take up the role as a young-generation woman in China in the drama "Beijing My Love" (screenplay by Kim Gyoon-tae and produced by Lee Gyo-wook), who shares love beyond the borderline with a Korean hero in the drama, Na Min-guk (played by Kim Jae-won). She definitely drew the peoples’ attention at the press conference at 63 Building in Yeouido, Seoul on November 21 with her active and straightforward self-expression with a traditional look of beauty with her long straight hair and clear eyes.

Soon Peipei is a graduate of the Beijing Dance School from which many Chinese talents attended such as Zhang Ziyi. She is an emerging new-generation star in China who practiced Chinese traditional dancing from the age of 11 and played a role as a female police officer with many tears in a popular police drama called “Chinese Security Squad No.6” in China, and also as a lovely and bright “Princess Chung" in the heroic drama "Pyong-Jong-Hyup-Young." She learned Korean for eight hours a day for one month and can perfectly speak all the lines in Korean in the script.

"I liked `Autumn Tales` very much among all the Korean dramas. Compared to the Chinese dramas that are very realistic, the Korean ones are very imaginative and have beautiful scenes. My favorite Korean actor is Chang Don-gun. He is manly who speaks little and seems reliable. And I think the Korean actresses are very sexy and give out modern feelings."

"Beijing My Love," with its production cost reaching 3.5 billion won, films 80 percent of its scenes in China. It was planned to have start shooting 18 months earlier but was cancelled due to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Disease) and instead was restarted November 30 in China. It will be broadcast in May next year in Korea and China at the same time. The hero of the drama was changed originally from Koh Su to Kim Jae-won.

We asked Soon Peipei whether the Chinese actresses use plastic surgeries also.

"It is not quite as usual as in Korea. I was surprised to see so many signs of plastic surgery clinics in the streets of Seoul. We find one or two by chance in Beijing. Me? Of course, I`ve never done it (plastic surgery)."

Seung-Hoon Cheon raphy@donga.com