Korean stars overcome scary moments

Acting as a ghost has helped South Korean actress Jun Hyo Seong get over her fear of the supernatural.

Jun, a member of sexy K-pop girl group Secret, plays a high school student who wakes up in a police station and realises she is dead in a new crime-meets-occult drama. Cheo Yong: The Paranormal Detective premiered on Thursday on Thrill (StarHub TV Channel 618 and SingTel mio TV Channel 415).

"When I was watching some horror movies for reference, I could understand the troubled minds of the ghosts and I had to focus on my own ghost role," says Jun, 24. "So, now, I'm not scared anymore. I feel more sympathetic towards them."

The drama, which started airing in South Korea last month, centres on a detective, Cheo Yong, who can see dead people. As he taps his unusual power to solve cases, he is dogged by Jun's schoolgirl spirit, who wants him to investigate how she died.

In an e-mail interview with the cast, the topic of the spectral and uncanny naturally came up.

"We had to shoot many scenes at night, so it was scary when we were in the woods," says actor Oh Ji Ho, 37, who plays the troubled detective with a murky past. "It felt like a ghost might appear at any moment."

He recently announced through his management agency that he is getting married next month, but declined to answer Life!'s questions on his impending nuptials.

Reports online have said that his fiancee is three years younger than him and works in the fashion industry.

Meanwhile, as fans try to unravel that mystery, actress Oh Ji Eun, who plays a female detective who seems to have a tangled history with Cheo, was hoping for some paranormal activity on set - but in vain.

The actress, 32, says she scared herself by throwing herself into her role.

"During the filming of the fifth episode, I had to act like I was seeing a soul through a foreign worker," she says.

"As he was a foreigner, we could not communicate. But that language barrier helped me get into the act of seeing a soul. I definitely got goosebumps while shooting that scene."

Cheo Yong: The Paranormal Detective premiered on Thrill (StarHub TV Channel 618 and SingTel mio TV Channel 415) on Thursday at 10pm. The drama airs every Thursday.

Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.