Bogota: City of the Lost, a new movie that quickly moved to a streaming service after a brief theatrical run, marks the third consecutive box office flop with Song Joong-ki as the lead. As Korea’s one of the most bankable stars, can his luck take a different turn next time?

The beginning of Song Joong-ki’s unfortunate streak with films was Hopeless (2023), in which he played a crime boss whose encounter with a seventeen-year-old boy—desperate for money to escape his violent stepfather—forces him to confront his own nightmarish past. This was followed by My Name is Lo Kiwan (2023), where Song portrayed a young North Korean defector living in inhumane conditions with his mother, constantly fearful of the Chinese police enforcing strict deportation rules. When his mother dies in an accident, leaving behind a small sum of money, he buys his way out of China to Belgium with a forged passport from a human trafficker. Yet, his circumstances remain much the same, forcing him to sleep rough during the harsh winter nights.

If these two characters sound similar, it’s because they are—both young men enduring extreme deprivation, loss, and injustice. Song, known for his boyish looks, seems positioned to bring pathos and evoke sympathy for these roles. At least, that’s the effect his casting suggests. But as the poor box office performance suggests, audiences either failed to see it or simply didn’t like what they saw. Despite these past failures, Song took on a strikingly similar character in Bogota, only to be met with an equally cold reception from viewers.

Bogota – A Lost Opportunity

 

In Bogota, Song Joong-ki plays Guk-hee, a young man thrust into a hostile environment where he can trust no one. Amid the financial crisis of the late 1990s, when Korea was on the verge of default, his parents decide to move to Colombia as a stopover before reaching their final destination, the United States. However, their journey stalls, leaving them stranded in their temporary residence and drawn into smuggling and selling Korean goods. Guk-hee soon begins working for a smuggling ringleader, Sergeant Park, and becomes one of the many Korean traders in Bogotá dealing in contraband.

Half gangster, half businessman, Guk-hee navigates a precarious world where mob rule intertwines with business strategies. His guile and brazen defiance of authority serve him well in the lawless smuggling underworld. Using the same skills, he rises through the ranks to become the de facto leader of the Korean traders. This is a murky space where illegal bootlegging thrives under the façade of legitimate commerce. Yet he remains a man constantly pursued, threatened, and betrayed—by rival gangs, corrupt customs officers, and even his own father. His lone struggle to carve out a future, though firmly outside the bounds of the law, encounters its most treacherous obstacles just when he least expects them.

Song’s Glorious TV Days

 

Perhaps viewers did not want to see such a sweet-looking man destroyed. Maybe it felt as unsettling as watching a puppy in distress—whereas they can endure, or even enjoy, seeing a more rugged figure like Ma Dong-seok or Yoon Kye-sang in pain. Nevertheless, Song Joong-ki has excelled in television, particularly in Descendants of the Sun (2016) and Reborn Rich (2022).

In Descendants of the Sun, he played a special forces captain deployed on a peacekeeping mission to the fictional war-torn country of Uruk. He embodies the ideal soldier—brave, disciplined, and unwavering in his duty—yet this very dedication places him in complex moral and emotional dilemmas. In Reborn Rich, Song took on a completely different role as Hyun-woo, a corporate employee reincarnated as the youngest grandson of the Soonyang conglomerate, Do-jun. Unlike his past self, Do-jun is no longer a mere loyal servant but a shrewd and ambitious strategist, navigating the family’s power struggles with precision.

In his TV roles, Song Joong-ki relies more on intellect than brute strength. While his characters possess physical agility and resilience, they are ultimately defined by their ability to think their way out of thorny situations rather than resorting to reckless violence. His TV dramas favor protagonists who maintain control, calculating their moves rather than being consumed by desperation. And audiences seem to prefer this version of Song—the strategist, the survivor who finds a way forward.

His recent film roles seem to have positioned him as characters trapped in cycles of suffering, deprivation, and moral ambiguity—figures who are not in control but are instead beaten down by their circumstances. Unlike his TV personas, these characters lack a clear path to power or resolution, making their narratives grimmer and more emotionally taxing. Perhaps this shift is what has made his transition to film less successful; viewers who admire his composed, strategic heroes may find it difficult to embrace him as a man on the brink of ruin.

Whether Song will continue challenging himself with darker, grittier roles or find a way to reinvent his TV-star appeal in cinema remains to be seen.