Sooyoung's Shakespeare Casting Is Bigger Than It Looks

When Choi Sooyoung steps onto the stage of Korea's National Theater this July as Portia in The Merchant of Venice, she will be sharing the spotlight with Shin Goo — one of Korea's most revered stage actors, now in his late eighties, who has devoted his life to the theater. That pairing alone tells you something important about where Sooyoung is in her career, and where she is heading.

The casting for Park Company's production of Shakespeare's comedy, running July 8 through August 9 at the Haeorum Theater, was announced this week. The lineup reads like a deliberate statement: alongside Sooyoung and Shin Goo are veteran actor Park Geun-hyung, EXO's Kai, and actress Won Jin-ah. This is not a vanity casting designed to sell tickets on idol recognition alone. The director is Oh Kyung-taek, whose previous Park Company production of Waiting for Godot earned critical acclaim. The venue — the National Theater of Korea — is the country's most prestigious performing arts institution. Everything about the production signals serious intent.

From SNSD's Stage to Shakespeare's

Sooyoung debuted as a member of Girls' Generation in 2007, one of the most successful K-pop groups of the decade. She was never the group's center, but she was its presence — a 174cm figure whose runway confidence translated naturally to performance. When the group's members began diversifying their careers in the 2010s, Sooyoung moved quickly toward acting, appearing in dramas like Squad 38 (2016) and Tell Me What You Saw (2020), building a quiet but consistent résumé.

The theater pivot began in earnest in 2023 with Wife, her first stage production in years. That was a contemporary drama — familiar emotional territory. What makes this Merchant of Venice casting different is the register: Portia is one of Shakespeare's most demanding roles, requiring a performer who can play both high comedy and legal drama with equal conviction. She is the play's moral and intellectual center, a woman who outsmarts everyone in the room while making it look effortless. It is precisely the kind of role that reveals whether an actor has the range to carry classical material.

Sooyoung studied theater and film at Chung-Ang University, graduating in 2016. Her sister, Choi Soo-jin, built her career entirely in musical theater, including roles in Jekyll and Hyde and The Phantom of the Opera. The artistic sensibility was always there. The question was when Sooyoung would commit to material that required it fully.

What Shin Goo's Presence Actually Means

In Korean performing arts, being cast opposite Shin Goo is not merely a professional honor — it is a kind of institutional endorsement. Shin Goo has spent his career on stage, in film, and in television since the 1960s, accumulating a body of work that spans every major form of Korean drama. That a production led by a director with serious theater credentials would cast him alongside Sooyoung indicates that the creative team sees her as capable of holding her own in that company.

This is not a given. The history of K-pop idol casting in legitimate theater is mixed. Some productions have leaned heavily on fan base traffic, delivering star-accessible fare that asks little of the performer beyond basic stage presence. Others have pushed idol-actors into material for which they were under-prepared, resulting in critical indifference that damage both the production and the performer's reputation.

Oh Kyung-taek's track record suggests he belongs firmly in the second category of directors — the ones who cast for capability, not visibility. His Waiting for Godot required sustained commitment to Beckett's internal rhythms, the kind of work that cannot be carried by charm or star wattage. If he is asking Sooyoung to play Portia, the presumption is that she can deliver the character's verbal dexterity and emotional precision at the National Theater level.

The Broader Pattern Behind This Casting

Sooyoung is not alone in this trajectory. EXO's Kai — also in this cast — has long been known as one of K-pop's most technically accomplished dancers, and has moved steadily toward stage performance as his solo career has expanded. Won Jin-ah, meanwhile, has built her reputation precisely through her stage work, giving this production a core of performers who approach theater as a primary form rather than a side activity.

What is emerging is a recognizable pattern among second-generation K-pop artists now in their early-to-mid thirties: a deliberate move toward high-prestige arts institutions, classical material, and productions that position them as serious practitioners rather than celebrity guests. This matters to them for reasons that go beyond personal fulfillment. The Korean entertainment industry, like all entertainment industries, has a credibility hierarchy — and a National Theater Shakespeare production sits near its top.

Sooyoung's 2026 has underscored this ambition from multiple directions. She released her first solo studio album in March. She is set to appear in OK Madam 2 as a film lead. And she made her Hollywood debut in From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. The range of activity is not scattered — it is coordinated, each project reinforcing a different dimension of her capabilities as a performer. The Shakespeare casting completes that picture.

What to Expect From July

Portia has often attracted the most charismatic performers in any production of The Merchant of Venice because the character demands precisely that quality — a woman who controls every scene she is in through wit and agency rather than force. The courtroom scene in Act IV, where she must argue law against expectation and prejudice, is one of the most technically demanding passages in the Shakespeare repertoire.

Whether Sooyoung can deliver that scene is the question that will define how this production is received. Korean theater audiences tend to be generous with idol-actors who demonstrate genuine effort, but they are also perceptive — and a National Theater audience at the Haeorum will include a proportion of regulars for whom Shakespeare is a standard by which they measure performance precisely.

The production runs until August 9 — the same month BIGBANG begins their world tour. In a summer that is already shaping up to be a significant moment for second-generation K-pop acts reclaiming their standing in a changed cultural landscape, Sooyoung's Portia will be one more data point. If she lands the role, the narrative writes itself: this is what happens when an idol decides, years into her career, to stop performing pop and start performing Shakespeare. And the industry notices.