Do you know actors who don’t have faces? They, who stand in front of microphones and not cameras, are voice actors. CBT reporters met Kang Soo-jin, the best-loved voice actor in Korea, and heard what he says about voice actors and the present situations they are facing. -Ed.

Before I became a voice actor and acted in my first work
   I originally wanted to study direction and production, not voice acting. However, I had a chance to study acting in my major curriculum because I was majoring in Broadcasting and Entertainment at university. As I took college courses, I thought it would be helpful to have acting experiences to become good at direction and production, and I wanted to test myself if I had a talent as an actor. One day, just at the right time, I had a chance because there was recruitment for voice actors right after I graduated from university, and I was accepted. I didn’t apply for it with the serious idea of becoming a voice actor, so I have nothing to tell about what kind of special efforts I had made to be a voice actor. In addition, there were no special academies for voice acting, though there were many for acting on TV or in movies. Instead of studying at an academy as many people do these days, I learned a comprehensive view of broadcasting and acting at school. Although I didn’t study specially for voice acting, there was a college course named radio acting, and the subject was similar with voice acting, because I had learned both radio and TV acting. I studied it as hard as other subjects.
 
Memorable characters and works
   It’s very hard to select the most memorable character because I acted as so many characters in so many works. Selecting only one that I love itself is hard, and I feel sorry for the other unselected characters as well. However, there are some characters and works which have different meanings to me.
   First of all, I remember Sang-su, who is an elementary school student and the eldest boy from the radio drama, ‘Our Sweet Home’. ‘Our Sweet Home’ was a long-lived program, which was aired for over 20 years, and I used to hear it often when I was young. I acted in it after I became an adult. After I had been on break for a while, I took the leading role for my first dubbing job, ‘Ranma 1/2’, with the helping hand of one of my seniors. At the same time, I dubbed the animation movie, ‘Aladdin’. These two became big hits, and I could restart my life as a voice actor. Therefore, these two helped me stand again. Soon after the two works, ‘Les Miserables’, which mixed a play and a musical, was performed in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Korea Voice Performance Association. I played the role of a 7-year-old boy, Gavroche, in it and received a favorable review. Many people who were in broadcasting started to become interested in me thanks to the work, so ‘Les Miserables’ is memorable. When it comes to foreign film dubbing, I remember Arnie Grape from ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’. The original actor of Arnie Grape was Leonardo DiCaprio. I’ve mostly dubbed his voice, and most people usually think of ‘Titanic’ first among the many movies where I dubbed his voice because it’s a masterpiece. Nonetheless, I remember ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’, though DiCaprio wasn’t the main character in it, because his acting was amazing and I tried to do my best to follow it. After this work, I think I began to take on DiCaprio in his other movies. For the rest, when it comes to animation series, I threw myself completely into the roles of Inuyasha from ‘Inuyasha’ and Luffy from ‘One Piece’. Personally, I add bigger meaning to Luffy from ‘One Piece’ because he is very active and strange, so huge energy and vocalization were needed to act, which was quite difficult.
 

 
The reality of the voice acting world 
   As the voice acting world shrinks, voice actor’s positions have fallen. The main reasons are profit and economic feasibility. Voice actors should compete and develop themselves, but they can’t because producers try not to invest in voice actors in order to make huge profits. Voice actors have no choice but to lower their values. That’s why their values and status can’t rise. Producers’ ways of thinking affect not only voice actors but also the works. Producers don’t readily pay much money, which results in the imperfection of works and the low quality of the dubbing culture. I feel disappointed about this situation. Voice actors are considered just as components of broadcasting production. This is quite different from entertainers or movies or drama actors. They are not usually ill-treated like voice actors because, if they were, profits would fall down. In other words, the organizational problems that voice actors are facing is a dilemma.
   In this situation, if voice actors confine themselves and don’t interact with people in other fields, they become rather isolated, and they fall behind in their profession. In other words, they should be open-minded and interact with others to get over this difficulty. As other people come into our field and work, we can broaden our scope of activities. Basically, acting is all the same. It is foolish to divide the genres and mass media. An actor is like a tree. All talents, movie actors, stage actors and voice actors have the same root and base. Each branch for each field is the only difference, and the fruits growing on the tree are the contents and works. These days, I’m acting in theatre once in a while not only to be better at voice acting but also to show juniors that stage actors, movie actors and voice actors are all the same. I’m running an entertainment management agency to train and manage multi-entertainers who are based in voice acting and can act in plays, movies or TV series at the same time. I’m not sure if this can be a breakthrough for the harsh voice acting world, but I hope it will become at least a foundation stone.
 
For students dreaming of voice actors
   I have so many things to say, but what I certainly want to say is, as I mentioned before, to remember, “Voice actors are actors as well.” Voice actors are not separated from other kinds of actors. They are one of them, which means they are essentially the same. Therefore, if you want to be a voice actor, study the essence of acting not just how to become a voice actor. As you study overall acting, there might be a chance to be interested in other kinds of acting and to become another kind of actor, or if you still want to become a voice actor, it’s fine to begin studying voice acting from then.
   In addition, I want to say to appreciate various genres of work along with studying voice acting. Don’t just watch animated cartoons. You should watch many dramas and plays as well as animated cartoons. You might think that you should watch many animated cartoons to be good at animation voice acting. However, the real way to be good at animation acting is appreciating various genres of work, which is also helpful to learn the basics of acting. Do you know that cartoonists read not only many cartoons but also many other books? Acting is the same. I hope you raise your basic cultural knowledge.

By Seo Hwan-hui

hh32@cbnu.ac.kr