More Than Friends Leads Ong Seong Wu & Shin Ye Eun on First Loves

Girl falls in love with boy. Boy reciprocates. Easy does it, right? Erm, not in the case of currently-showing Korean drama More Than Friends. The love affair gets messy when the boy in question does not reciprocate, and instead strings the girl along for 10 whole years. When Girl finally moves on with another man — a CEO, no less, Boy gets jolted out of caddish tendencies and starts having feelings for her.

While it sounds a lot like a rom-com gone wrong, this K-drama, throws up plenty of questions for its audience: is it possible to hold a crush for 10 long years? Are first loves that memorable? KKBOX asks the cast — Ong Seong Wu,Shin Ye Eun &Kim Dong Jun — if they believe in the lasting power of first loves.

Former boybander Ong Seong Wu is the cold but misunderstood male lead, who actually has a back story to his behaviour — divorced parents, emotionally detached, and the likes. The romantic-at-heart singer-actor tells us that he believes wholeheartedly in first loves. “Whatever the situation is, the feelings I have when I first encounter [something] stays lingering in me. I am sure everyone has thought of going back in time to their first love when they felt the emotions for the first time. The feelings of first love are so vivid and memorable.”

But given the complexity of the first male lead, Seong Woo also reveals that he had to get into the right frame of mind for the character of Lee Su to make him believable to the audience. “Like Lee Su who is a photographer, I enjoy taking photographs and I have my own reasons for liking photography. To play the role, I thought of the possible reasons why he started photography and his thoughts when he is taking photos.”

The idealistic and lovelorn female lead Shin Ye Eun, of A-TEEN fame, sings a different tune to Seong Woo, though. “If it were me, it will be difficult [to hold a crush for 10 years]. There will be misunderstandings [during this period] and they will grow with time. I feel that I will give up. A happy ending is where both parties can be in relationships where their love is reciprocated.”

But the actress feels a lot for her character Woo Yeon. “It was clear to me as I was reading the script that Woo Yeon will have moments where she falls apart of blames herself because she holds an unrequited love for someone. I wanted to express such fragility of Woo Yeon well.”

Former ZE:A member Kim Dong Jun rounds up the More Than Friends love triangle as the charming but possessive CEO Joon Soo whom many netizens are rooting for in the drama. In fact, so popular is the coupling between Shin Ye Eun’s Woo Yeon and Kim Dong Jun’s Joon Soo that netizens are hashtagging #TeamCEO and #WooJoon on Instagram.

On the idea of first loves, Kim Dong Jun tells us that he feels that such a notion is fleeting. “It is not something you should try to purposely forget or [hold on to]. It should be a memory that flows along with time,” he wisecracks.

It remains to be seen how this love triangle will pan out on More Than Friends.

More Than Friends is streaming on Viu, with two episodes available every week.

Listen to More Than Friends' cast music on KKBOX.