Blanc (블랑)

Park Ji-ho — who performs and acts under the name Blanc and is a member of the group ANODE — has spent nearly a decade building a dual career in South Korean music and television that few idols-turned-actors have matched in sustained momentum. The clearest measure of that trajectory arrived in early 2026, when his film *The Man Who Lived with the King* crossed the ten-million-admissions threshold at the Korean box office, a benchmark that designates its lead as a "ten-million actor" — a distinction that carries genuine commercial weight in the domestic industry.

From idol stage to dramatic lead

Park Ji-ho first came to wide public attention through the competitive audition program *Produce 101*, which led to his time as a member of the project group Wanna One. The nine-year mark of that group's shared history with fans was revisited in the Mnet Plus original reality series *WANNA ONE GO: Back to Base*, which concluded its final episode in mid-2026 and included a zero-gravity light-aircraft challenge undertaken at fans' request. His fanbase, known as May, turned out in full for his sold-out two-day fan concert *2026 Park Ji-hoon Fan-Con [RE(Reflect)]* — his first such event in seven years — where he performed for an audience he described as unchanged in their loyalty despite the passage of time.

The acting transition

The film *The Man Who Lived with the King*, in which Park Ji-hoon took on the role of the historical figure Danjong, arrived roughly three months before his television drama ratings surge in mid-2026, placing two distinct leading-man performances in close succession. That succession drew critical notice: a June 2026 roundup in Korean media grouped him alongside Shin Hye-sun and Moon Sang-min as actors who had proven their range across two consecutive projects in the first half of the year.

His TVING original drama *The Legend of the Cook Soldier* — in which he plays Kang Sung-jae, a military cook navigating unit crises, cooking competitions, and an outpost threatened with closure — demonstrated the kind of ratings recovery that captures industry attention. The series opened at 1.7 percent viewership and climbed to 7.3 percent, eventually reaching a series high of 10.8 percent by its sixth episode, surpassing concurrent competition at the box office and on streaming. Park Ji-hoon has spoken publicly about the production's improvisational energy on set, and about preparing for the role by enrolling in a cooking academy — an experience he described, with some candor, as having diminished his enthusiasm for cooking while leaving his knife skills notably sharper.

Standing

In a June 2026 fan poll for male singers people would want to share an umbrella with on a rainy day, Park Ji-hoon placed second behind Ha Sung-woon — a result the coverage attributed in part to residual warmth from Wanna One's recent reunion activities. The framing is light, but the polling context points to something more durable: after nine years in the public eye, across idol group membership, solo music, and a film and television career, his visibility has not contracted. A *You Quiz on the Block* episode featuring him previously held the programme's ratings record for its time slot before being surpassed by the Jensen Huang episode in June 2026 — a marginal displacement that nonetheless confirmed the earlier record was genuine. Park Ji-hoon has attributed his longevity in part to a deliberate effort to stay grounded, stating in an interview tied to *Cook Soldier* that he finds visible self-congratulation distasteful, and that maintaining his original mindset has been a conscious practice across his career.