‘Beef’ Creator on Forming “Korean Avengers” for RM Music Video and Watching BTS Member Bounce Back After Accident on Set

Beef creator Lee Sung Jin says he’s enjoying the opportunities his Emmy-winning Netflix series has brought him — including his latest project: directing a music video for BTS superstar RM.

Lee collaborated with RM on “Come Back to Me,” a beautifully shot six-minute music video that feels like a short film. The song, which begins with an acoustic vibe and includes whistle sounds and guitar riffs, was released Friday and is a departure for the BTS member. The song appears on his upcoming sophomore solo album, Right Place, Wrong Person, out May 24.

“It’s so sneakily catchy. I heard it once and then all day long I was humming it to myself. I’m like, ‘Man, that is an earworm. It just gets in there,’” Lee says of the song.

“I was really surprised because it [had] such a different aesthetic and tone and a different side of RM that I hadn’t seen before,” he adds. “RM is known for his rapping, obviously all things BTS and I’m a huge BTS fan. I saw him at the Rose Bowl so I was like, ‘OK, I know he’s going a different direction’ and I knew that going in, but I had no idea it was this kind of direction. It was so refreshing and unexpected and I got so excited at the idea of coming up with a music video for a song like that.”

Lee called in some creative heavyweights to pull off the video, including art director and production designer Ryu Seong-hie (Memories of Murder, Oldboy) and cinematographer Kim Woo-hyung (The Little Drummer Girl, Assasination). The video also features an all-star cast, including Pachinko actress Kim Minha, Emmy-nominated Beef actor Joseph Lee and Kang Gilwoo from The Glory, among others.

“I think everyone really came together for the idea and it really felt like we were assembling the Korean Avengers,” Lee says. “I am so thankful to them for taking the time. I know music videos are always a little bit tough and a little bit of a grind, and the fact that they showed up and gave such incredible performances, I’m really thankful.”

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Lee talks about working with RM, how the performer quickly recovered after bruising his eye on set, returning to Korea since elementary school to shoot the music video and his upcoming work on the Marvel Studios film Thunderbolts.

What was going through your mind when you were putting this video treatment together?

I was kind of blue skying it at first and I think in my head I was still initially thinking of it more as a music video. I think I was pitching a lot of dance numbers or narratives that involved dance. I think after a couple failed attempts, it quickly dawned on me that they want to really go for it on this one. They wanted to actually tell a story and that is why they had reached out because I know RM was a fan of Beef and I think he was really interested in trying something new, [and] we just kind of putting aside the dance aspect, almost even putting aside the music and tapping into what the themes of the song actually are and what kind of story that we can tell that feels true and relatable, but also kind of mysterious and open to interpretation at the same time. It took a lot of conversations where we were sharing stories back and forth, sharing personal things, both on his end and my end. Then we arrived at a strange story about a man that is trapped in the past, present and future and seems to not be able to leave his own home.

There’s a good amount of acting in this video — what was it like working with RM in that aspect?

You’re always a little nervous when you’re working with these giant global superstars. Are they going to want to rehearse? Are they going to take notes? RM was game for everything. He was there for long hours. First take of the very first scene, he bent down and his head hit the camera and it was a giant gash on his eye and immediately I thought, “Oh great, I’m going to be deported immediately because I’ve just scratched this national treasure.” To his credit, he went to the hospital, got stitched up, came back and he was ready to go. He was so versatile and open to direction and I think he was also pushing me. He would come and check the monitor and be like, “Oh, I think we can get that one a little bit better.” He has an incredible team behind him too. 

It was really refreshing. I thought I was going to be coming into something that was a little bit more of the traditional K-pop structure, but I think RM and Team RM are really all about creating a new chapter for K-pop, creating a new path forward and I was just honored to be a small part of it.

Did he come back and continue filming the same day of the accident?

Yeah. He came back the same day. I think the shoot was over three days and we shot in Paju, which is about an hour and a half outside of Seoul, kind of closer to the North Korean border. I had never shot anything in Korea before, so I was really nervous. Someone that I had gotten to know over the course of Beef, Park Chan-wook, who is to me one of the greatest directors to ever do it and he was so kind and so generous. I was telling him that I was going to do this music video and he introduced me to his longtime production designer, who also does some of director Bong Joon-ho’s stuff, the great Ryu Seong-hie. [Her credits include] Memories of Murder, The Handmaiden, The Host, just all my favorite films. And director Park also introduced me to one of his DPs that he works with often, Kim Woo-hyung, we call him Woosh. He did a The Little Drummer Girl with Florence Pugh. He did one of director Park’s earlier films; did this great Korean film called Assassination.

These are two people at the top of their craft in Korea and for them to want to do this small little music video, I think spoke to how much RM means to everybody [and] how much the idea excited everyone. On set they really saved the day; the lighting and the production design on this one is pretty incredible.

What was it like shooting in Korea?

I went to elementary school there and I hadn’t been back since and I was nervous, but after about a week of prep, it just felt like a lot of — there’s a click that happens where suddenly my Korean got really good and suddenly I clicked into the environment and it felt like home. It felt like I had been away from home for a while and it just felt so comfortable. The crew was amazing. They were working so hard on this thing and I’m not going to lie, the food in between takes — in America, we got some good crafty over here, but the Korean crafty just hits on another level because I couldn’t wait to go on break and get some of that [Korean food]. I was just like, “Dang, got to bring this over to America.” Just every aspect of it felt really comfortable. I’m really excited to shoot something again in Korea. I’m eager to go back.

You sang in an a cappella group and you play a couple instruments, so you clearly have a connection to music. Is music something that you ever pursued career-wise or still want to?

I thought coming out of college that was going to be the thing that I do — music. I was in an a cappella group in college and I was in bands. I was concertmaster of my orchestra growing up in high school and it was my passion and I tried it. I was in a band and quickly realized that there are other people that are much, much better at this than me. I was like, “All right, maybe I think I’ll just stay a fan” but music’s so important to me. With the way I write, I always write with music in mind. I look at storytelling in the same way as chord progressions and … I see story structure similarly as how you map out chords, so I’m always trying to figure out what chord we’re playing in a story.

It was really neat to be a part of a music video, which I’ve never done before and combining those two loves and naturally the storytelling, I think on this one, you can kind of feel the rises and falls of it in conjunction with the song itself and the rises and falls within the music. I don’t know if I’ll do another music video because it’s going to be hard to top this one, but if someone like RM came calling again, I’m sure I could convince myself to tap back into this and try to combine both sides again.

How has life changed since the success of Beef? 

It’s been a wild ride. One of the biggest changes I think is getting to meet people like RM. I remember I was sitting at home on Instagram and I suddenly got a DM from San [Yawn], who’s in [the South Korean music collective] Balming Tiger, who’s the creative director of this album and of this music video. I’m a huge Balming Tiger fan as well. When RM did the collaboration with them on “Sexy Nukim,” that music video blew my mind. I got the DM from him and I thought he was reaching out to do something with Balming Tiger and I was like, “Oh, sweet, I love Balming Tiger.” Then he was like, “Oh no, this is for RM” and then my mind was blown and I was staring at that DM for a while. Yeah, things like that where people you respect and admire so much watch the show and want to work together, it’s a dream come true. I definitely don’t take it for granted and I’m excited to see who else I get to collaborate with going forward.

You wrote on the upcoming Marvel Studios film Thunderbolts. What was that like?

I was working off an existing script from Eric Pearson and I did my pass on it and the director, Jake Schreier, is one of my best friends and so we have a shorthand and it was really fun working with him on that. Eventually some things took me away from that project and we were able to pass off the writing to Joanna Calo, who also wrote on Beef. She co-showruns and co-directs The Bear. She’s also one of my oldest and dearest friends and so that was a really natural handoff and I know they’re shooting it right now and I’m very excited to see what Jake and Joanna did to get it to the finish line because that cast is exceptional and I hope the audience will kind of feel some of the Venn diagram between Beef and Thunderbolts in terms of some of the themes that we wanted to explore through the film.