Character page for Train to Busan.
SPOILERS ARE OFF
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Seok-woo
Played by: Gong Yoo
The protagonist of the film, he's an apathetic hedge fund manager and the divorced father of a young daughter.
- Face Death with Dignity: Double Subverted. He is clearly not happy being forced to abandon Su-an as she screams for him to stay with her after he gets infected and sobs before succumbing. However, upon seeing flashes of when he held Su-an as a newborn, he feels at peace before jumping off the locomotive.
- Go Out with a Smile: He spends his last moments thinking about the time Su-an was born, and jumps off the train with a grin on his face.
- The Hero Dies: He gets infected by Young-suk, and throws himself off the train to protect Su-an and Seong-kyeong.
- Married to the Job: He's dedicated a hell of a lot of his time to his work, to the point it's caused him to divorce and has strained his relationship with his daughter.
- Papa Wolf: He will protect his daughter, no matter what. Even if it costs him his life.
- Parents as People: He deeply cares about his daughter, but doesn't seem to be there for her often enough. He was absent during her school recital, and buys her a Wii as a guilt gift when she already has one.
- Parental Neglect: He's very much Married to the Job and it drove him to neglect his daughter, though he tries to work on it by taking her to see her mother in Busan.
- Workaholic: Until the zombie oubreak reaches the train, he can't get off his cellphone for his business calls.
Su-an
Played by: Kim Su-an
Seok-woo's six-year-old daughter.
- Break the Cutie: She spends her birthday fleeing for her life from a zombie apocalypse, and loses both her grandmother and father along with possibly her mother whose fate is unknown in the process, leaving her an orphan.
- Brutal Honesty: She tearfully calls out Seok-woo's selfishness, and even says it's how he got divorced in the first place.
- Final Girl: She's the only person to make it to Busan safely along with Seong-kyeong.
- The Protagonist: She ultimately ended up as the true one of the movie, following her father's death.
- Supporting Protagonist: Her father's actions and death are told from her viewpoint.
Yoon Sang-hwa
Played by: Ma Dong-seok
A soon-to-be father.
- Action Dad: His daughter has yet to be born, but he qualifies anyway.
- The Big Guy: He serves as one in the trio of him, Seok-woo, and Young-guk. He's the most experienced fighter, as well as the physically largest member of the group, and can effortlessly lift a zombie with one arm.
- Determinator: After the infection takes hold, he seems to be able to delay it out of sheer willpower just so that he can hold the line a bit longer. He does eventually succumb to it, though.
- Deuteragonist: He share this role with his wife.
- Face Death with Dignity: Although he doesn't technically die, after realizing he has been infected anyway he doesn't flinch, using his last moments of sanity to held back the horde.
- Heroic Sacrifice: He holds the door piled with zombies long enough for Seok-woo and the others to escape, but then the door breaks and he gets mauled by them.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's initially very confrontational towards Seok-woo, calling him a leech for working as a hedge fund manager. After they spend time together, Sang-hwa empathizes with Seok-woo about the struggles of being a father.
- Papa Wolf: He's violently protective of Su-an, despite having just met her and her father, even pulling a Big Damn Heroes on a zombie about to attack her in the infested train station.
- The Lancer: Serves as this for Seok-woo, double as a Hypercompetent Sidekick for being the most smart and formidable and acting mostly as The Leader.
Seong-kyeong
Played by: Jung Yu-mi
Sang-hwa's pregnant wife.
- Action Survivor: Despite being pregnant, she still does her best to help out in a fight.
- Deuteragonist: She share this role with her husband, and ultimately the sole one following the latter's death.
- Final Girl: She's the only one, along with Su-an, to make it to Busan safely.
- Mama Bear: Not only does she survive a zombie outbreak while pregnant with her child, she also goes above and beyond to keep Su-an safe.
- New Child Left Behind: Sang-hwa dies while she's still pregnant with his daughter.
- Parental Substitute: Given that we never see Su-an's mother in the film, Seong-kyeong is the closest thing to a mom that Su-an has in the movie.
Min Young-guk
Played by: Choi Woo-shik
Dubbed by: Alexandre Nguyen (European French)
A high school baseball player.
- Action Survivor: He's only a baseball player, but can still hold his own against the zombies.
- Cannot Spit It Out: He has feelings for Jin-hee, which his teammates encourage him to pursue, but he can't bring himself to tell her how he feels.
- Despair Event Horizon: When Jin-hee gets infected, he loses all hope and lets her infect him without putting up a fight.
- Heroic BSoD: When Yong-guk, Seok-woo, and Sang-hwa run into a train car full of his zombified teammates, he can't bring himself to harm any of them.
- Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: The savvy guy to Jin-hee's energetic, she's an upbeat cheerleader who clearly likes him while Yong-guk is too shy to reciprocate her feelings.
- Tritagonist: He shares this role with Jin-hee.
Kim Jin-hee
Played by: Ahn So-hee
An energetic high school cheerleader.
- Cassandra Truth: She enthusiastically announces to Young-suk's front-car group of passengers that there are more survivors, with Yong-guk being one of them. But Young-suk doesn't believe her, and tries to get the rest of the passengers to distrust Seok-woo when he makes it out of the horde alive.
- Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Between her and Young-guk, she's an upbeat cheerleader who clearly likes him while Young-guk is too shy to reciprocate her feelings.
- Tritagonist: She shares this role with Young-guk.
The Homeless Man
Played by: Choi Gwi-hwa
A stowaway inside the train.
- Face of a Thug: He's disheveled and dirty, but he's one of the kindest characters of the film, and he's quick to take care of others, especially the young Su-an.
- Foil: Subtle, but he is one to Young-suk. Both individuals are extremely scared by the situation, but Young-suk is a successful, well-dressed man that uses fear-mongering to order others around, using them as meatshields to protect himself, while the homeless man is a poor stowaway that cooperates with others for the collective well-being. While Young-suk causes the death of several people (directly and indirectly) through his selfishness, the homeless man sacrifices himself to save others and spends his last moments to comfort them.
- Heroic Sacrifice: He charges into a zombie horde to distract them long enough so Su-an and Seong-kyeong can escape.
- Nice Guy: He's nothing but a good man, even though life has been less than kind to him.
- No Name Given: He's only referred to as "the homeless man".
Young-suk
Played by: Kim Eui-sung
A Chief Operating Officer for the Stallion Express corporation.
- Asshole Victim: He gets several people killed trying to avoid the zombie horde, yet ends up becoming a zombie anyway.
- Beware the Living: He's a true liability to the still-human passengers of the train when it comes to deal with the zombie outbreak, and several of them die by his fault.
- Big Bad: While the zombies are the main threats in the film, he's the main human antagonist that's making life much more difficult for the protagonists, throwing people under the bus even to their deaths just so that he could save himself. It's all too fitting that he eventually becomes the Final Boss for Seok-woo and co. when he turns into a zombie and fights Seok-Woo in the climax.
- Dirty Coward: He only cares about his own safety and nothing else.
- Evil Counterpart: He is basically what Su-an accuses Seok-woo of being: a selfish coward who only cares about himself. But whereas Seok-woo learns and grows from the experience, Young-suk remains selfish and cowardly for the entire runtime.
- Hate Sink: He has basically zero redeeming qualities. He's directly responsible for several deaths by using people as Human Shields against the zombie horde, and makes no effort to help the others.
- Hero Killer: He gets Jin-hee and subsequently Young-guk killed, abandons the train conductor to his fate after the man left the safety of the other train to come save him, and bites Seok-woo after he becomes a zombie himself.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Since zombies don't have a will of their own besides their natural instinct to infect other humans, we have this sorry excuse of one who would throw people under the bus (even if it means getting them infected) just to save his own skin.
- It's All About Me: He cares about nothing but his own survival, even if it's at the expense of other people.
- Psychopathic Manchild: He's a selfish man, and his final moments before becoming a zombie are spent pleading Seok-woo to take him to his mother like a scared, lost child.
- Stupid Evil: His selfishness is incredibly short-sighted for the purpose of his own survival. This is best exemplified when he uses the conductor as a human shield to flee from a place where he was relatively safe already. His subsequent escape plan is not very good either, as he decides to leave every door behind him open in a story where doors have been extremely reliable safeguards. This not to mention how he insists of fortifying the door against the survivors before the one against the infected out of sheer pettiness toward Seok-Woo.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Thanks to his stupid evil above, basically the entire third act could have been much smoother and lead to a higher number of survivor if it wasn't for him (well, and the people obeying him). Had he not directed the rest of the passengers against letting the survivors in, all of them would have made it safely, leaving them with a still fortified door against the infected and the old lady would not have had a reason to let them in, being reunited with her sister. They could also have let the train car later on without alarming the infected, making their transition to the new train much smoother.
The Zombies
Humans who have been turned into ravenous, rabid zombies. They overrun Seoul and several cities on the way to Busan, and the outbreak spreads inside the film's eponymous train.
- Horror Hunger: They're not seen eating much flesh actually, but they have an urge to bite.
- Marionette Motion: Several are seen breaking their members (arms, legs) and continue to move on unimpeded even if they look as disjointed as a puppet.
- No Zombie Cannibals: They don't attack each other.
- Our Zombies Are Different:
- They're fast, and someone who's been bitten by them turns into them quite fast as well, in a matter of minutes.
- They're also easily blinded in the dark and when their vision is obstructed, something the protagonists quickly take advantage of.
- Plague Zombie: They turn people into zombies by biting them.
- Raising the Steaks: The first sign of the zombie outbreak early on is a deer that's hit and killed by a car... only for it to start moving in a jerky, unnatural way and get up on its feet again. Cue Scare Chord-shot of its white, dead eyes.
- Zombie Infectee: One bite will turn a human (or animal) into a zombie in a matter of minutes.
