Did You Know? Kim Seon Ho Had to Learn 4 Languages for His New K-Drama

Kim Seon Ho has become known for his "good boy" image thanks to his work in beloved romantic K-dramas. In recent years, however, he seems to have dipped his toes in more intense genres, starring in titles such as The Childe (2023) and The Tyrant (2024).

This 2026, Seon Ho is making a comeback to the schmaltz of rom-coms with Can This Love Be Translated?, a Netflix original series penned by the famous Hong Sisters. As the title suggests, the show will feature dialogue in more than one language, with Seon Ho playing interpreter Ju Ho-jin. In a series of interviews, he details how he prepared for the role, revealing that it took him months to learn multiple tongues.

During the show's official press conference, Seon Ho described his character Ho-jin as “a multilingual interpreter who is fluent in six languages—Italian, English, Japanese, Chinese, French, and Korean—yet [is] clumsy when it comes to expressing his own feelings."

In the story, Ho-jin will be hired by global superstar Cha Mu-hee, who will then be portrayed by Go Youn Jung. What begins as a strictly professional set-up gets muddled when unexpected feelings arise, causing some tension between the two. Upon familiarizing himself with the script, Seon Ho "studied how to layer emotions onto it."

However, before he could bring Ho-jin to life, he first had to master the different tongues an acclaimed interpreter would be familiar with. "The preparation time took about four months before filming, and I kept preparing while filming as well," the leading man recalled in another interview.

As one can imagine, learning a foreign language is already quite the challenge, let alone four. As Seon Ho went through the filming process, he realized how speaking in different ways added complexities to his acting process. "No form of acting can really be called easy, but this time, because I had to speak several languages simultaneously in a single scene, I realized that multilingual acting is not easy," he shared.

It came to a point where he would find difficulty in "switching back" to Korean once their director, Yoo Young Eun, called cut. "After finishing [scenes] and moving on to the next where I had to speak Korean, I found myself suddenly unable to speak Korean properly," says Seon Ho.

And speaking of director Yoo, he has nothing but good words to say about the decision to cast Seon Ho. "Beyond the pressure of language," he states, "the character is a neat and simple person, so delicate emotional acting was important. In that respect, Kim Seon Ho came to be the one we could trust and entrust the role to."

The story of Can This Love Be Translated? will unfold across multiple countries, which means filming in various locations around the globe. Director Yoo says that each location choice was intentional, as each one added depth to the overall story. "We tried to choose places with distinct vibes so that viewers could feel as if they were traveling." The locations themselves would become central to the characters' emotional journeys with one another.

In a nutshell, the director describes the K-drama as "a romantic comedy where characters gradually come to interpret each other's languages of love through their own perspectives." If this sounds like something up your alley, you can add it to your watchlist starting January 16 on Netflix.