The work he wants to do is acting. 
Even though he always loved to express himself to others since he was young, he got few chances even to talk because of brain lesions. Especially, school was a suffocating space. As he went to general school instead of special school, he could not comfortably communicate with non-disabled students, so he was not able to express his own thinking and feelings. The actors on TV relieved his suppressed feelings.
He started thinking about his career when he was about to graduate from high school. One day, when his friend asked him, ‘What do you really want to do?’, he said, ‘Actor’. Although acting was what he really wanted to do, he did not talk about it to anybody because no one gave him credit by saying ‘That makes no sense’. His friend told him to attend an acting workshop held by a theater company for the disabled called ‘ANN’ that he was belonging to. Ha Jiseong received acting lessons from the theater company ‘ANN’. 

Challenge to auditions

Ten years later after his first appearance on the stage in the foundation play ‘Waiting for Godot’ of ANN in 2010, he thought there should be changes in his acting. 
For this reason, he started challenging auditions of other theater companies from 2020. He was fully aware of the fact in which opportunities would not just come to him when he was not doing anything. He Jiseong started revealing his presence as an actor by appearing in ‘Ten Million Cities’ of Seoul Metropolitan Theatre. 

Ha Jiseong’s best work, ‘Teenage Dick’ 

In 2022, an audition notice of barrier-free performance project by the National Theater was posted. Through this audition, Ha Jiseong got the lead role ‘Richard Gloucester’ in the play ‘Teenage Dick’. On top of so many lines to memorize, he was absolutely lacking in time to practice. 

After finishing the first performance, the director Sin Jaehoon was satisfied by saying ‘This is a miracle’ to Ha Jiseong. The performance attained a great success. 

He is aiming to exist on the stage.

His parents were strongly against his acting career. When he was a student, his parents thought that his acting must be a simple club activity. When he continued acting even after graduation, his parents seriously warned him. They told him to find a job as acting could not be a true job to feed him. 
However, when he won an award in the Baeksang Arts Awards, his father was proud of his son as ‘an honor to his family’. In the Baeksang Arts Awards, the presence of Ha Jiseong was really standing out. 
Ha Jiseong’s dream is to ‘exist on the stage’. From now on, our society should grow the actor Ha Jiseong rather than his own personal efforts. First of all, many writers should create works that cast people with cerebral palsy as main roles. 

Ha Jiseong 
Bachelor’s degree in the Dept. of Broadcasting & Entertainment, Global Cyber University 
Acting Award at the sector of Theatre in the 59th Baeksang Arts Awards
Play & many others
Short film