Noh Sang-hyun Has Meditated Every Day Since Elementary School — Here's the Ancient Instrument He Swears By

Most actors who appear in a W Korea photoshoot don't bring their own spiritual instruments. Noh Sang-hyun did. The actor, whose role in Apple TV+'s Pachinko brought him international attention over the past few years, arrived at his recent feature for the magazine carrying a singing bowl — a Tibetan instrument that produces deep, resonant tones when struck or when a mallet is circled around its rim. He plays it when his mind isn't in the right place. He has been doing something like this since he was in primary school.

"When my heart doesn't feel right, I sound the singing bowl," he said during the interview, titled "Noh Sang-hyun's Exploration Life" and released at the end of March 2026. The phrase is simple, almost matter-of-fact, which is part of what makes it striking. This is not a new discovery, not a pandemic-era hobby, not something picked up from a wellness influencer. It is, by his account, part of the texture of his daily life.

A Routine That Begins With a Grandfather

Noh Sang-hyun, born in 1990, traces his meditation practice to his grandfather, who took him to a danjeon breathing training center when he was in elementary school. He would wake up early before school and practice controlled breathing exercises — the kind of tradition that sits at the intersection of Korean heritage and contemplative discipline.

A teacher once singled him out in front of classmates for his consistent approach to the practice. He's been at it, in some form, ever since. Today, his meditation sessions run 10 to 15 minutes, sometimes shorter, at no fixed time of day. He sits, focuses on his body, and breathes. When he notices the singing bowl during a session, he plays it once. The simplicity appears to be deliberate.

Singing bowls have been used in Tibetan Buddhist traditions for centuries, valued for the harmonic vibrations they produce. Research into their therapeutic effects has documented reductions in stress, tension, and anxiety, along with improvements in mood. None of this is what Noh Sang-hyun talks about when he talks about his bowl, though. He talks about it the way someone talks about a familiar object in a familiar room — as something that has simply been there.

The Philosophy Behind the Practice

What comes through in Noh's description of his wellness routine is less a commitment to any particular method and more a coherent philosophy about emotional management. Meditation, for him, is not a relaxation technique. It is a mechanism for not reacting immediately — for creating enough space between stimulus and response that the response can be chosen rather than simply happening.

"Emotional conflict doesn't resolve problems," he said in the interview, summarizing an orientation that reads as neither therapeutic nor spiritual in any obvious way, but rather deeply practical. He has arrived, through years of early-morning breathing exercises and a singing bowl, at something that functions for him like a professional discipline: the ability to observe his own emotional state without being entirely governed by it.

For an actor, that's not incidental. The work of sustained emotional inhabitation — which Pachinko, in particular, demands — requires exactly this kind of internal architecture: the ability to go into a state and come back out of it, to access feeling without losing the thread that connects you to your off-screen self.

Pachinko, and What Comes Next

Pachinko, the Apple TV+ adaptation of Min Jin Lee's multigenerational novel, spans decades of Korean and Korean-Japanese history, following one family's story from the early twentieth century through the present. Noh Sang-hyun appeared across the series in a role that required him to navigate a complex arc across historical periods. His performance drew attention both inside Korea and internationally, adding a global dimension to a career that had already been building through a steady accumulation of television and film roles.

He was recognized as one of the standout Korean actors of 2024, alongside his appearance in Love in the Big City. Now, in April 2026, his next major project is already generating anticipation: he plays Prime Minister Min Jeong-woo in MBC's upcoming drama 21st Century Grand Prince Lady, opposite IU and Byun Woo-seok — a cast combination that has been drawing interest since the announcement.

It is the kind of project that lands differently when you know something about how its lead prepares. Noh Sang-hyun, who starts most days somewhere between his breathing exercises and a singing bowl, seems unlikely to approach the role with anything less than the same deliberate internal focus he's brought to everything else. For fans of his work, that's reason enough to wait.

The Quiet Center of a W Korea Moment

The W Korea feature — photographed with the sultry, layered aesthetic the magazine is known for — produced images that circulated widely online, as Noh Sang-hyun's features and presence tend to do. But the conversation around the shoot kept returning to the interview itself, and specifically to the candor with which he described a practice that most people keep private, if they have it at all.

There's a version of this story that is simply a lifestyle piece: actor has interesting wellness habit, discloses singing bowl, internet briefly fascinated. What gives it more weight is the continuity of it. This is not a recent affectation. It runs back to a grandfather, a breathing center, an elementary school classroom where a teacher told a child he was doing something well. It runs through Pachinko and Love in the Big City and a W Korea photoshoot in March 2026, and presumably into whatever comes after the prime minister role in MBC's next drama.

The singing bowl sits in the room. When his heart doesn't feel right, he sounds it. Some things don't need to be more complicated than that.