South Korean actress Lydia Park 'wholeheartedly' supports Green Vietnam Festival

Launched by Tuoi Tre (Youth) online newspaper in 2024 in collaboration with the Department of Climate Change under the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment and the Packaging Recycling Organization Vietnam (PRO Vietnam), the Green Vietnam program has included a wide range of activities to promote environmental awareness over the past years.

One of its highlights is the annual Green Vietnam Festival, which has attracted thousands of people eager to experience various green living models.

In 2026, under the message 'Green Transition - Sustainable Efficiency,' Green Vietnam has gradually evolved beyond a media campaign into a project connecting government agencies, experts, businesses, communities, and consumers in the journey toward sustainable development.

Lydia Park, one of the ambassadors of the Green Vietnam Festival 2026, is currently an acting professor at the Yonsei Institute of the Arts at Yonsei University in South Korea.

She earned her doctorate from Lordland University in California with the dissertation 'An Empirical Study of Uta Hagen's Acting Technique: Focusing on the Training of Professional Actors in the Vietnamese Film Industry.'

Her connection with Vietnam goes back more than ten years. 

The professor has led acting workshops at the Autumn Meeting Cinema Event, led by Vietnamese director Phan Dang Di, and at the Da Nang Asian Film Festival (DANAFF).

She is now serving as a Korea–Vietnam co-producer on a historical film co-production between the two countries.

This time, her late mother, Park So-yeon, an environmental activist, inspired Park's commitment to environmental protection and led her to join the Green Vietnam Festival.

Park hopes to use her voice and influence to promote environmental protection.

“I believe my mother would be overjoyed in heaven to hear this news. Thank you sincerely for honoring her spirit,” Park wrote in an email response to questions from Tuoi Tre about her role as an ambassador for the Green Vietnam Festival 2026.

A mother's legacy lives on at Green Vietnam

How did you first learn about the Green Vietnam program, and why did you decide to join and become an ambassador?

I first learned about Green Vietnam through Vietnamese film producer Tran Thi Bich Ngoc, a dear friend in Vietnam. When I learned that young people and local communities were coming together to protect the environment and build a sustainable future, I was genuinely delighted.

That's because caring for the environment is a value I absorbed as a child. My mother was an educator and an environmental activist, and long before the environment became a global concern, she was sorting waste, cutting down on plastic bags, and recycling and saving resources in daily life.

So when I came across Green Vietnam, it felt like more than taking part in a good event. It felt like a way to carry on the spirit my mother left me.

For over ten years, I've worked in Korea–Vietnam cultural exchange through film and acting. Now I'd like to stand with Vietnam on another shared human value: the environment. 

Environmental problems know no borders. The air we breathe, the water we drink, and the future of our planet are all connected.

I don't see being an ambassador as an honorary title. The real role involves using my experience and influence to help more people understand why this matters, and to take that first small step.

The green spirit my mother practiced in Korea is something I now want to share with the young people of Vietnam, a country I love.

South Korean actress, acting professor Lydia Park

Your mother, an environmental activist and educator, seems to have had a profound influence on your commitment to green living. Could you tell us more about her work and how her example has shaped your own views and actions on environmental protection?

My mother spent her whole life as an educator, and she worked to make caring for the environment part of everyday life, then spread it to the wider community. Looking back, she was ahead of her time.

In the early 1990s, when I was a university student, she came home one day with nine unused trash bins from her school, in every color of the rainbow. 

She lined them up in our hallway, labeled each one (paper, plastic, plastic bags, milk cartons, bottles, cans and so on) and asked the whole family to sort everything we threw away.

This was before separating household waste became a normal part of life in Korea. 

Her reasoning was simple: if waste is thrown out all together, sorting it later takes a lot of time and labor, but if it's separated from the start, recyclable materials can be put to much better use.

She practiced her ideas at home first, and then thought about how they could work for society as a whole. 

In the memoir she left us, she records that in 1995 she submitted environmental proposals to the Seoul city government. They included waste separation, more efficient collection of recyclables, take-back and recycling of electronics, reducing plastic bags, and saving resources through the Anabada spirit – a Korean shorthand for 'save it, share it, swap it, reuse it.'

Reading it, I realized her ideas had never been just a matter of family discipline.

For her, protecting the environment wasn't a grand slogan. It meant starting at home, then turning it into a way of life neighbors and society could share. 

She taught me that caring for the environment isn't only about keeping nature clean. It's a responsibility to generations not yet born. That is the most precious legacy she gave me.

What lessons and everyday green habits did you learn growing up with your mother? Is there a memory that still stays with you?

Two memories stand out.

The first involves those nine rainbow-colored bins. The funny part is that I got paid for sorting. My mother gave me the job of separating our household waste and paid me 5,000 won a week. So I was the first paid employee of her little recycling system! 

At the time, I was just happy to earn pocket money, but now I see she was letting me experience environmental protection first-hand.

The second is from 1995, when I was studying in Moscow. My parents came to visit during the break and asked if I needed anything. I asked them to bring lots of plastic bags. 

Back then, plastic bags were hard to find in Moscow, and I found it inconvenient. My parents really did arrive with a suitcase full of them.

But my mother saw the situation completely differently. I thought the shortage of plastic bags was a nuisance; she thought a way of life that used fewer of them might actually be better for the environment. 

She was concerned that plastic bags don't break down easily in nature, and afterward she began stressing the need to cut back on them and carry reusable shopping bags. 

She even suggested that if shops charged for plastic bags instead of handing them out for free, people would naturally get into the habit of bringing their own.

A message for the next generation

As an actor, acting educator and ambassador, how do you hope to encourage young people to live greener?

I believe art has a powerful ability to change hearts. A single film can change the way we think; one actor's honest performance can move thousands of people. 

Protecting the environment is the same. Information alone isn't enough. People need to feel it, and then act on it.

Years of teaching actors have taught me one thing: people learn and change far more through experience than through explanation. Just as my mother had me sort the trash with my own hands, environmental education should be something we live, every day.

I'd love to work with actors, filmmakers, and young artists on video content and cultural projects about the environment. Drawing on the trust and network I've built with Vietnamese actors over the past decade, I'm also imagining a green cultural campaign that brings Korean and Vietnamese artists together.

Vietnam's young generation is creative and dynamic, with huge potential to make a positive impact through digital media. One short video, one small campaign can change how many people behave.

I'm also preparing the AI International Food Film Festival (AIFFF), which we aim to launch in 2027. Food is the part of culture closest to our daily lives, and food waste, resource consumption and sustainable eating are closely tied to the environment. I want to explore how film, food, and new technology can carry that message.

To young people, I want to say this: you don't have to be someone special to protect the environment. Start by using fewer disposables, carrying your own water bottle and shopping bag, not wasting food, and sharing things you no longer need with someone who does.

South Korean actress, acting professor Lydia Park

What environmental attitudes or practices have impressed you in Vietnam, and which Korean green habits would you like to share with Vietnamese communities?

Korea and Vietnam have different cultures and histories of development, but we share the same love of nature and the same wish to leave a better world for our children.

Over many years, Korea has made waste separation, recycling, food-waste management, and reducing disposables part of everyday life and public policy. 

Of course, Korea still has plenty of environmental problems to solve. But what I'd like to share is this: Korea didn't leave environmental protection to individual goodwill alone. It developed systems and daily habits together, so that anyone can take part.

Three things in particular: separating waste at the source, reusable shopping bags, and the Anabada spirit which protects the environment and also carries values of community and solidarity.

What impresses me most in Vietnam is the passion of young people and the vitality of its communities. Campaigns like Green Vietnam show what's possible when citizens, businesses, and youth tackle environmental issues together.

I believe Korea's experience combined with the creative energy of Vietnam's young generation can bring about real change.

The point isn't to copy Korea's approach. It's to find new ways together that fit Vietnam's own culture and way of life.

Environmental protection has no borders, but how we practice it should reflect the culture and wisdom of each country. I hope Korea and Vietnam can be partners who learn and grow together on the environment, too.