If there’s one universal truth in cinema fandom, it’s this: people will go to extreme lengths to meet their heroes.
That devotion played out in spectacularly awkward fashion on a recent episode of The Daily Show, when Ken Jeong posed as Ronny Chieng’s translator — all in an elaborate bid to get close to legendary Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook.
Park, who was on the show to promote his upcoming dark comedy No Other Choice, appeared alongside Chieng — and his own professional translator. What Chieng didn’t expect, however, was a second “translator” waiting in the wings.
“I didn’t know you were going to bring a translator,” Chieng admitted. “‘I actually brought my own translator. Is that OK?”
Enter Jeong, who shares South Korean roots with Park and is fluent in Korean. Introduced as Chieng’s translator for the segment, Jeong was immediately met with loud cheers from the audience — a moment that only heightened the chaos that followed.
Once the applause died down, Chieng asked Jeong to tell Park how much he loved and admired his work.
“Ronny loves and admires your work!” Jeong hollered instead of translating.
The room froze.
“He can hear, OK?” Chieng quickly clarified. “I meant in Korean, tell him in Korean.”
Rather than correcting course, Jeong turned to Park’s actual translator and asked, “How do you say, ‘Ronny likes and admires your [work]?’ Don’t yell.”
“What the f—k? You’re embarrassing me in frony of the director,” Chieng snapped.
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Eventually, Jeong dropped the act entirely — and confessed that the entire stunt had been calculated from the start.
“I lied, OK? Guilty! I just had to meet director Park,” Jeong shared. “He is the Korean Scorsese. He is the GOAT. He is the best of all time! This man inspires me … I had to do what I had to do and take drastic measures to meet him. Much like the character in your movie, I had no other choice.”
The punchline doubled as a knowing nod to No Other Choice, Park’s 2025 dark comedy adapted from the 1997 American novel The Ax. The film follows a man driven to increasingly desperate measures — a parallel Jeong was clearly happy to lean into.
Park later revealed that the project took him 15 years to bring to life, largely due to production roadblocks in the United States. Eventually, he made the decision to move the project to Korea.
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When asked by Chieng to name the studios and companies that made the process “difficult,” Park politely declined.
“As much as I want to say all the names, I do have to find my next job and my next investment,” he said via his translator.
No Other Choice had an early special IMAX screening in the U.S. on December 8, 2025, ahead of its limited theatrical release on December 25.
