The 190cm Actor Who Sang His Own OST and Built a Treehouse With Cha Eun-woo

Part 4 of 6 in The Man Dior Saw First: Kim Young-kwang

Featured photo: Kim Young-kwang in 2018. Photo: Kazoo3131 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).

Pinocchio made Kim Young-kwang famous as the second lead. In 2016, for the first time, his name came first. That year he sang, he built a house in the jungle, and he became a network-drama leading man.

2016: “Star Candy,” in his own voice

Gogh The Starry Night was made as a web drama in 2016 and aired as a weekend special on SBS. Kim played Kang Tae-ho, the boss of Girls’ Generation’s Yuri (Kwon Yuri) and a man who had loved her silently for years. His line, “I’ve had a crush for a long time,” stuck (Wikitree, Oct. 22, 2026).

The drama’s title song, “Star Candy,” was sung by Kim himself. It is a song about the heart of someone in unrequited love, with Moon Sung-nam of the band Every Single Day as music director (Kookje Shinmun, Oct. 26, 2016). The man who started on the runway now had his own voice on a soundtrack album. The first time I heard it, I couldn’t stop smiling. A 190 cm man singing about a crush in such a sweet, gentle voice: it was impossible not to find it adorable.

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May 2016: A treehouse in New Caledonia

That same year he joined SBS’s Law of the Jungle in New Caledonia, the long-running survival show led by Kim Byung-man. The other members were Yuri, ASTRO’s Cha Eun-woo, Yoon Park and Hong Seok-cheon (Chic News, 2016). Kim built a three-story eco treehouse with Yuri and Kim Byung-man (Sports Q, 2016), and Cha Eun-woo was in the same jungle. Nine years later the two would meet again as friends of 24 years in the film The First Ride.

152,000 views as of Oct. 25, 2026.

60,000 views as of Oct. 25, 2026.

October 2016: The man living in Soo Ae’s house

That fall, in KBS’s Sweet Stranger and Me, he played Go Nan-gil, a younger man who suddenly shows up in Soo Ae’s life as her “new stepfather.” It was his first lead on a broadcast network (Wikitree, Oct. 22, 2026). The scene where Soo Ae tells him “love means never having to say you’re sorry” has passed 200,000 views on KBS’s official channel. He was nominated for excellence in a miniseries at that year’s KBS Drama Awards (Wikipedia).

Watch on YouTube: KBS Drama (official), “Sweet Stranger and Me: Soo Ae tells Kim Young-kwang ‘love means never having to say you’re sorry'” 206,000 views as of Oct. 25, 2026.

2017: A prosecutor in a suit

In MBC’s 2017 Lookout, he played Jang Do-han, an elite prosecutor hiding his true identity, opposite Lee Si-young. The drama climbed to No. 2 in its time slot, and the fit of his suits became its own topic (Wikitree, Oct. 22, 2026). He was nominated for top excellence in a Monday–Tuesday drama at the MBC Drama Awards (Wikipedia).

4,600 views as of Oct. 25, 2026.

Pictorials were still his stage. That September, L’Officiel Hommes shot him in Da Nang, Vietnam, and the magazine titled its official video “Pictorial Master Kim Young-kwang.”

On October 22, 2017, he held a premium fan meeting in Shinagawa, Tokyo. The photo at the top of this page was taken that day by a fan, who released it under a free license.

In the summer of 2018, he stood beside Park Bo-young, his co-star from Hot Young Bloods, on a movie poster again.

Where to watch (checked Oct. 25, 2026, via JustWatch) – Gogh The Starry Night (2016): US — Rakuten Viki · Korea — Watcha – Sweet Stranger and Me (2016): US — Rakuten Viki, OnDemandKorea · Korea — wavve

Sources

• Wikitree, Oct. 22, 2026
• Kookje Shinmun, Oct. 26, 2016
• Chic News, Law of the Jungle New Caledonia lineup; Sports Q, Yuri and Kim Young-kwang’s treehouse
• Wikipedia, “Kim Young-kwang (actor)”
• Wikimedia Commons, “Kim-youngkwang.jpg”