Profile

Kim Kwan-cheol
          Head of MTA21, the academy for voice acting

Who is Kim Kwan-cheol?

     He became a MBC Voice actor in 1983 and did the Kevin Costner part in some movies. For the animation, He did Park Sang-taek part in Mobile Police Patlabor, Emperor Neo part in Nadia in the Secret of Blue Water and Ido part in GUNNM (銃夢)

"HOW DARE you do that to me!!" An angry voice is coming out from a tense room. Guess who this is? He is a voice actor who is dubbing foreign films into Korean. They act realistically with their voice and deliver a certain situation to the audiences. Many people may be curious about the  field of voice actors. They are engaged in works such as dubbing foreign film in Korean, appearing as a narrator in a TV program or acting in radio drama. Their working fields are much more diverse than people think. Do you have confidence in characteristic voice, accurate pronunciation, acting, personality, and analyzing sentences? Then, your aptitude might be suitable to be a voice actor. To find the world of voice actors, we interviewed Kim Kwan-cheol who is the head of MTA21, academy for voice acting.

World of the voice actor

Each voice actor may have a different affections for this job according to the area they are concerned with, and the term they participated in. However, they commonly know that it is fruitful enough to appeal to people with only their voices. For instance, voice actors can get great pleasure when their children boast about their parents' activity in animation to their friends, and they read books to the blind people. However, it is a pity that they cannot choose the works of their own. Since it is a kind of professional job, a beginner gets 600~700 thousand won a month and a free-lance voice actor 2~10 hundred million won a year. Voice actors do not have to worry about retirement due to the age limit, but keep in mind that they could be pushed out by many new and prosperous voice actors in any second.

Way to be a voice actor

The way to become a regular voice actor is to join a broadcasting system. Unlike an announcer, they receive applicants only in Seoul. As a result, chances to be a voice actor are quite low: 10 people or so each year. Nowadays, most people attend an academy for their training. While in old days most voice actors made themselves proficient only after being a voice actor, today they are already competent for voice acting because of much practice in the academy. In an academy, students are supposed to get dialogue and narration-centered education. As there are dubbing test in MBC (Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation), they also prepare for this as well. Even though there is supposedly no age limit to this job, most successful candidates are younger than 30 since human relationships between seniors and juniors must be concerned. If they do not consider age, an age gap between them could be as great as 20~30 years.  A high school graduate is a requirement and for men, they must have served the army. No matter what you are majoring it does not matter at all to be a voice actor.

To Yonseians who want to be a voice actor

It is really difficult to be a voice actor. Someone who applied for this job at 20 finally became a voice actor at 30. This proves the high competition in this field. Thus, you need patience and enthusiasm so that you never give up and keep challenging. Once you pass that process, you will get more than you expected. 

 

 

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