Kim Hye-yoon: The Life Story Behind Korea's Lovely Star
In this post
Kim Hye-yoon was sixteen when she first stood in front of a television camera, and she was twenty-two when the whole country finally learned her name. Those six years in between are the heart of her story, because they were not empty years, and they were not wasted years. They were years of school, of small parts, of a university scholarship that paid for her studies, of auditions that led nowhere, and of a quiet decision, made again and again, to keep going. When the big part came, it came in a drama about rich parents and their children, and it came after she had been chosen from two hundred other young women who wanted the same role. She played a girl who was clever, proud, and afraid, and the audience could not look away. After that, the parts came faster, and the audience grew larger, and by 2024, when she played a young woman who travels back in time to save the singer she loves, her name was known far beyond Korea.
There is a warmth to Kim Hye-yoon that viewers notice before they notice anything else. It is in her smile, in the way she laughs, in the way she plays characters who are kind without being weak, and brave without being loud. But warmth alone does not explain a career that has lasted more than a decade, and it does not explain the awards she has won, or the films she has led, or the way critics now describe her as an actress you can trust. What explains her is the combination of that warmth with a serious, studious mind. She was a student who won a full scholarship to study film, she graduated with a degree, she took part in student films, and she treated acting as something to be learned, not only as something to be felt. That student is still visible in her work, in the care she takes with a character, in the homework she does before a scene, and in the way she never seems to be acting on impulse alone.
This story follows her from Seongnam, the city where she was born, through her teenage years on small sets, through her university years in Seoul, through the drama that made her famous, through the comic-book fantasy that made her a lead, through a film about a girl with a bulldozer, and through the time-slip romance that made her a star around the world. It ends, for now, in 2026, with a horror film that became a box-office success, and with new projects waiting. It is a story about starting young, waiting patiently, studying hard, and being ready when the door finally opens.
A Middle-School Dream in Seongnam
Kim Hye-yoon was born on 10 November 1996 in Seongnam, South Korea, a city south of Seoul known for its planned neighbourhoods, its parks, and its schools. Seongnam is close enough to the capital for a young person to dream about the world of film and television, and far enough away for that world to feel like a real place, not a fantasy. She grew up there, went to school there, and in her third year of middle school, when she was about fifteen, she decided that she wanted to become an actress. That is a young age to make such a decision, and it is an age when many dreams come and go, but hers stayed. She began to attend an acting academy, she began to audition, and she began to take small roles, all while she was still a schoolgirl.
The decision to start so young meant that her teenage years were different from those of her classmates. While other students were worrying only about exams, she was also worrying about auditions, about scripts, about the long bus ride to a set, about the need to be ready the moment a director called her name. That is a heavy load for a teenager, and it requires a kind of discipline that most adults do not have. She seems to have had it from the start, and it is worth remembering that she did not start because someone pushed her. She started because she wanted to, and because she was willing to do the work that came with wanting it.
She went to Seonil Girls’ High School, and after that she entered Konkuk University in 2015, in the Department of Film Studies. Konkuk is a well-known university in Seoul, and its film department is a serious place, where students learn about the history of cinema, about how films are written and shot, and about how a performance fits inside a larger work. Kim Hye-yoon did not treat university as a break from acting. She treated it as part of her training, and she took part in student film projects while she was there, learning how a film is made from the inside, with a small crew and a small budget and a group of classmates who were all learning at the same time.
While she was at university, she also won a merit-based full scholarship, which paid for her studies, and that scholarship shaped the next few years of her career in a practical way. A full scholarship is not only money. It is a responsibility, because it means that the university believes in you, and it means that you have to keep your grades up, and it means that you have to make choices about which acting jobs to take and which to turn down. Kim Hye-yoon chose to focus on her studies and to take only minor roles during that period, so that her acting would not damage her academic work. That is a mature decision for a young person, and it is a decision that many young actors would not have made. She made it, and she graduated in February 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in film studies, and the degree is still a part of who she is.
Sixteen and Already on Set
Her first television role came in 2013, in a KBS drama called Samsaengi, in which she played the teenage version of a supporting character. She was sixteen, and the part was small, but it was a real part, in a real drama, with a real crew, and it gave her a first taste of what a set feels like: the early morning, the waiting, the make-up, the lights, the need to be ready when the camera turns to you. For a sixteen-year-old, that is a lot to take in, and it is easy to be overwhelmed by it. She was not overwhelmed, or if she was, she did not let it show. She did the work, and she went back to school, and she kept auditioning.
In 2014, she gained some notice for a role in the OCN crime thriller Bad Guys, a drama about a detective who puts together a team of criminals to catch other criminals. It was a darker, more adult drama than Samsaengi, and it showed that she could work in a serious story, even as a teenager. After that, she took only minor roles for a few years, because of her studies, and one of the more important of those roles was in the 2017 film Memoir of a Murderer, a mystery thriller about a retired serial killer who is losing his memory. A film role, even a supporting one, is a different kind of work from a television role, because the camera is closer, the scenes are shot in a different order, and the actor has to hold a character steady across days of filming that do not follow the story. She learned that, and she learned it while she was still a student.
Those years, from 2013 to 2018, are often described as a period of waiting, but that word does not do them justice. She was not waiting in the sense of doing nothing. She was studying, she was acting in small parts, she was learning how a set works, she was learning how to balance school and work, and she was building a reputation as a reliable young actress who could be trusted with a part, however small. That reputation matters, because directors talk to each other, and casting directors remember the young actors who show up on time, know their lines, and do not cause trouble. Kim Hye-yoon built that reputation, one small part at a time, and it is the reason that when a bigger part came up, her name was on the list.
She also learned how to handle rejection during those years, because every actor faces rejection, and a young actor faces it more than most. An audition is a strange thing: you walk into a room, you read a few lines, you smile, you leave, and you never hear anything again. It is easy to take that personally, to think that the silence means you are not good enough, to think that the next audition will be the same. Kim Hye-yoon kept going to auditions, kept working on her craft, and kept believing that the right role would come. That belief was not loud or dramatic. It was quiet, and it was steady, and it carried her through the years when nobody outside a small circle knew her name.
A Scholarship and a Full Classroom
The scholarship deserves a closer look, because it explains so much about how Kim Hye-yoon thinks. A merit-based full scholarship at Konkuk University is not given to everyone. It is given to students who have done well, who have shown promise, and who have earned the university’s trust. For Kim Hye-yoon, it meant that her studies were paid for, and it meant that she could focus on learning without worrying about money, but it also meant that she had to protect her grades. She did that by being careful about which acting jobs she took, and by putting her studies first when the two conflicted. That is a difficult choice for a young actress, because the industry moves fast, and a part you turn down today may never come back. She turned down work anyway, because she believed that her education mattered, and because she believed that a degree in film would make her a better actress in the long run.
University also gave her something else: a group of classmates who were learning the same things she was learning, and a place to make student films. Student films are small, cheap, and often rough, but they are a good place to experiment, to try a character in a different way, to learn how a camera sees a face, and to make mistakes without the pressure of a big audience. Kim Hye-yoon took part in those projects, and they gave her a different kind of experience from the professional sets she had worked on. On a student set, everyone is learning, everyone is helping, and everyone is trying to make something good out of very little. That is a good education for an actor, because it teaches humility, and it teaches the value of teamwork.
She graduated in February 2019, and the timing of that graduation matters. By the time she left university, she had already been acting for six years, she had already played a major role in Sky Castle, and she was about to take her first leading role in Extraordinary You. The degree did not make her famous, and it did not get her those parts, but it gave her a foundation that many young stars do not have. She understands film, not only as an actor, but as a student of the medium, and that understanding shows in the choices she makes about scripts, about characters, and about the stories she wants to tell. A person who has studied film is less likely to take a part only because it pays well, and more likely to ask whether the story is worth telling. Kim Hye-yoon has made choices that suggest she asks that question.
The Girl from Sky Castle
The part that changed everything came in 2018, when she auditioned for Sky Castle, a JTBC satirical drama about rich families who push their children to succeed at any cost. She was chosen from a pool of two hundred applicants to play Kang Ye-seo, the eldest daughter of one of those families, a girl who is clever, proud, hard-working, and afraid. Ye-seo is not a simple character. She is smart, she studies hard, she wants to get into a good university, and she is also arrogant, because her mother has taught her that she is better than other people, and she is frightened, because she knows that one mistake could ruin everything. Kim Hye-yoon played both sides of her, the pride and the fear, and the audience could see both at the same time.
Sky Castle, which aired from 2018 into 2019, became one of the most watched and most talked-about Korean dramas ever made. It was discussed in homes, in schools, in newspapers, and on social media, because it touched a nerve in Korean society: the pressure on children to succeed, the money spent on private tutors, the fear that a child who does not get into the right university will fail in life. Ye-seo was at the centre of that pressure, and Kim Hye-yoon made her feel real, not like a symbol, but like a girl who could be sitting in a classroom in any city in Korea. Viewers loved her and disliked her at the same time, and that is a sign of good acting, because a character who is only loved or only hated is a flat character, and Ye-seo was not flat.
For her work in Sky Castle, Kim Hye-yoon won the Best New Actress prize at the Baeksang Arts Awards in 2019, one of the highest honours in Korean entertainment. She was twenty-two, and she had been acting since she was sixteen, and the award was a recognition of six years of work, not only of one drama. She also won a rising-star prize at the Korea First Brand Awards, and she became a household name. Her face was familiar to people of all ages, and her name was in the news, and the offers began to come in. She had waited for this moment, and she had prepared for it, and when it came, she was ready.
There is a detail about Sky Castle that is worth remembering, and it is the way her character dressed. Ye-seo’s fashion, with its soft colours and its careful style, reminded viewers of the Sanrio character My Melody, and she earned the nickname My Melody Princess. A nickname like that sounds like a small thing, but it shows how closely the audience was watching her, and how much they cared about the details of her performance. She was not only acting. She was creating a person, down to the clothes she wore, and the audience noticed.
A Comic-Book Girl Who Stepped Off the Page
Her first leading role came in 2019, in the MBC school fantasy drama Extraordinary You, based on a webtoon called July Found by Chance. She played Eun Dan-oh, a high-school girl who discovers that she is a character in a comic book, and that her life has been written for her by someone else. Dan-oh is supposed to be a minor character, a girl who is meant to be sick, quiet, and unimportant, but she refuses to accept that fate, and she tries to change her own story. It is a strange, clever idea, and it asked Kim Hye-yoon to play a girl who is both a teenager and a person who knows she is in a story, both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.
Extraordinary You was a different kind of drama from Sky Castle, and it showed a different side of her. Dan-oh is bright, funny, stubborn, and full of heart, and Kim Hye-yoon played her with a lightness that made the fantasy feel real. The audience could see the joy in her performance, the pleasure of playing a character who refuses to be a minor figure in someone else’s story, and that joy was infectious. She won newcomer and excellence prizes at the MBC Drama Awards for the role, and the drama found a devoted audience, especially among young viewers who understood what it feels like to be told that your life has already been decided for you.
In the same year, she was cast in the psychological thriller film Midnight, in which she played a young woman in a dangerous situation, and she began to show that she could work in film as well as in television. In 2020, she took her first leading film role in The Girl on a Bulldozer, a production that was filmed in 2020 and released in cinemas in 2022. She played Goo Hye-young, a young woman who drives a bulldozer, a large, loud, heavy machine, and who has to deal with her father’s accident and the problems that follow. A bulldozer is not a glamorous thing, and Hye-young is not a glamorous character. She is angry, she is stubborn, she is trying to protect her family, and she is doing it with a machine that most people would be afraid to drive. Kim Hye-yoon played her with a toughness that surprised viewers who knew her only as Dan-oh or Ye-seo, and the performance won her several newcomer prizes, including prizes at the Blue Dragon Film Awards and the Grand Bell Awards, and a rising-star prize at the New York Asian Film Festival. She was also listed in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, a sign that her work was being noticed outside Korea as well.
She also appeared in Snowdrop in 2021 and 2022, a JTBC drama in which she reunited with the production team of Sky Castle, and in Secret Royal Inspector and Joy in 2021, a historical drama in which she played a woman who helps a secret inspector solve cases. Each of those roles added something new to her work, and each one showed that she was not content to play the same kind of character twice. She was moving, deliberately, from one kind of story to another, and she was learning something new each time.
A Bulldozer, a Time Slip, and a Song
After The Girl on a Bulldozer and a second film, Ditto, in 2022, Kim Hye-yoon returned to television in 2024 in Lovely Runner, a tvN time-slip drama that became one of the most loved dramas of the year. She played Im Sol, a young woman who is a fan of a singer named Ryu Sun-jae, played by Byeon Woo-seok, and who travels back in time to save him from a tragedy. The story is about love, about time, about the wish to change the past, and about the cost of trying to do so. Im Sol is bright, brave, and full of feeling, and Kim Hye-yoon played her with a warmth that made the audience care about her from the first episode. The drama was praised by critics and by viewers, and she was described in Korean media as an actress you can trust, a phrase that means the audience believes her, whatever the story.
Lovely Runner earned her a first nomination for Best Actress at the Baeksang Arts Awards in 2025, and she won the most popular actress prize at the same ceremony, as well as prizes at the Asia Artist Awards and other ceremonies. She was also listed in the Forbes Korea Power Celebrity 40, at number thirty, a sign that her fame had grown beyond television and into the wider culture. The drama also won her a best-couple prize with Byeon Woo-seok, and the two of them became one of the most talked-about pairs in Korean drama that year. A time-slip story is a difficult thing to play, because the actor has to be convincing in two different times, as a teenager and as an adult, as a fan and as a person who knows the future, and Kim Hye-yoon did it without ever letting the audience get lost.
The success of Lovely Runner also showed how far she had come since Sky Castle. In 2018, she had played a girl who was trapped by her mother’s ambition. In 2024, she played a woman who travels through time to save the person she loves. The two characters could hardly be more different, and yet both of them feel like they were played by the same actress, because both of them are played with the same honesty, the same warmth, and the same attention to detail. That is the mark of a good actor: not that she plays the same person every time, but that she brings the same care to every person she plays.
Horror, Fantasy, and What Comes Next
In 2026, Kim Hye-yoon’s career moved into new territory again. She was cast in the SBS fantasy drama No Tail to Tell, which aired in January 2026, and on 8 April 2026 she returned to the big screen after four years with the folk horror film Salmokji: Whispering Water, which became a box-office success in South Korea and marked her first commercially successful film. She was praised for her performance, and media outlets described her as a horror queen, a new nickname that shows how far she has come from the schoolgirl in Sky Castle. Horror is a difficult genre, because it asks the actor to be afraid, and to make the audience afraid, without ever looking foolish, and Kim Hye-yoon did it with the same care she brings to every role.
She is also reported to be working on several new projects, including the crime film Three of a Kind, the action comedy High School Detective, a legal drama called Good Partner 2, and a Disney+ adaptation of the Japanese novel The Miracles of the Namiya General Store. Those projects, if they go ahead as reported, show that she is still choosing a wide range of stories, from crime to comedy to law to fantasy, and that she is not content to stay in one genre. She is also known for her endorsements, for brands ranging from vitamins to cosmetics to credit cards, and for her work as an ambassador for campaigns in Seoul and in Taiwan, where she was named a promotional ambassador for tourism in 2026. Those are signs of fame, but they are not the story. The story is the work, and the work is still growing.
Kim Hye-yoon is now twenty-nine, and she has been acting for more than a decade, which is a long time for someone so young. She has played a schoolgirl, a daughter, a comic-book character, a bulldozer driver, a time traveller, and a woman in a horror film, and she has played each of them with a warmth and an honesty that makes the audience believe in her. She has been called the Nation’s Little Sister, and the My Melody Princess, and an actress you can trust, and each of those names tells us something about how the public sees her. But the name that matters most is her own, and the work that goes with it, and the work is still going on.
My Take:
I keep thinking about the scholarship, because it is the part of Kim Hye-yoon’s story that feels most like real life. A full scholarship is not a glamorous thing. It does not come with a red carpet, or with photographers, or with a prize on a stage. It comes with a letter, and with a responsibility, and with the quiet knowledge that someone believes in you enough to pay for your education. Kim Hye-yoon won that scholarship, and then she protected it, by turning down acting work, by putting her studies first, by doing the boring, sensible thing when the exciting thing was right in front of her. I admire that more than I admire any award she has won, because awards are given for a performance, and a scholarship is given for a person. It says: we trust you to work hard, to learn, to finish what you started. She did all of those things, and she graduated in February 2019, and I think that degree is still with her, in the way she prepares, in the way she thinks about a story, in the way she treats acting as a craft to be learned, not only as a talent to be shown off.
What I love about her story is the length of the wait, and the way she filled it. Six years, from sixteen to twenty-two, is a long time to be a working actor without being famous, and it is a long time to be a student at the same time. Most people in that position would have chosen one thing or the other. They would have left university to chase acting, or they would have left acting to focus on university. Kim Hye-yoon did both, and she did both well, and I think that tells me something about her character that no interview could tell me. She is a person who does not like to leave things unfinished, and she is a person who believes that hard work in one area helps hard work in another. Studying film made her a better actress, and acting made her a better student of film, because each one taught her something the other could not.
I also think about the two hundred applicants for Sky Castle, and about what it must have felt like to be one of two hundred young women who wanted the same part. That is a crowded room, and it is a room full of hope and fear, and it is a room where most people will leave disappointed. Kim Hye-yoon walked into that room, and she walked out with the part, and I want to be honest about how I feel about that. I feel happy for her, and I also feel a little bit sad for the one hundred and ninety-nine who did not get it, because they were probably talented too, and they probably worked hard too, and they probably went home and wondered what they had done wrong. That is the truth about acting, and about many other things in life: sometimes the difference between success and failure is not talent, or hard work, or goodness. Sometimes it is a casting director’s feeling in a particular moment, a feeling that cannot be explained or predicted. Kim Hye-yoon was ready for that moment, and she was lucky, and I think it is important to say both of those things, because readiness without luck is not enough, and luck without readiness is wasted.
When I think about Ye-seo, the character she played in Sky Castle, I think about the pressure that Korean children live under, and I think about how hard it must be to be a teenager in a country where your exam results feel like they decide your whole life. Ye-seo is a girl who studies hard, who is proud, who is afraid, and who is pushed by her mother to be perfect. Kim Hye-yoon played her with an honesty that made the audience see the fear underneath the pride, and I think that honesty is the reason the drama worked. It was not a drama about rich people. It was a drama about pressure, and about what pressure does to a family, and about how a child can be both loved and hurt by the same parent. I think about the young viewers who watched Ye-seo and saw themselves, and I think about the parents who watched her and saw their own children, and I think that is a powerful thing for a drama to do. It is not only entertainment. It is a mirror, and Kim Hye-yoon held that mirror up with care.
I want to talk about Extraordinary You, because it is the drama that I think shows her joy most clearly. Dan-oh is a girl who discovers that she is a character in a comic book, and that her life has been written for her, and she refuses to accept it. She tries to change her story, she tries to make her own choices, she tries to be more than a minor character. That is a beautiful idea, and it is an idea that speaks to anyone who has ever felt like a minor character in their own life, like a person whose story has been decided by someone else, like a student, or a worker, or a daughter, or a son, who is expected to follow a script they did not write. Kim Hye-yoon played Dan-oh with a lightness and a stubbornness that made the audience cheer for her, and I think the reason the drama found so many fans is that everyone, at some point, has wanted to step off the page and write their own story. She did that, on screen, and she made it look joyful, and I think that joy is a gift.
There is a part of her story that makes me think about bulldozers, which is a strange thing to say, but I mean it seriously. The Girl on a Bulldozer is a film about a young woman who drives a large, heavy, noisy machine, and who uses it to protect her family. A bulldozer is not a pretty thing, and it is not a feminine thing, and it is not the kind of thing a young actress is expected to drive on screen. Kim Hye-yoon drove it, and she played the character with a toughness that surprised people, and she won prizes for it, and I think that tells me something about her courage. She is not afraid to be unglamorous, she is not afraid to be angry, she is not afraid to be loud, and she is not afraid to play a character who is not easy to love. That courage is the opposite of the My Melody Princess nickname, and it is just as real. She can be soft, and she can be hard, and she can be both in the same year, and that range is what makes her an actress, not only a star.
I also want to say something about Lovely Runner, because it is the drama that made her famous around the world, and because it is a story about time, and about the wish to change the past. Im Sol travels back in time to save the singer she loves, and she tries, again and again, to make things turn out differently. That is a fantasy, but it is also a feeling that everyone knows: the wish to go back, to say something differently, to make a different choice, to save someone you love. Kim Hye-yoon played that wish with a warmth that made the audience feel it, and I think the reason the drama worked is that she never played the time travel as a trick. She played it as a feeling, as love, as grief, as hope, and the audience followed her because they understood the feeling, even if they did not understand the time travel. That is good acting, and it is good storytelling, and it is the reason she was nominated for a Baeksang Best Actress prize.
For a reader who is young, who is studying, who is working in small jobs, who is waiting for a big chance, I think Kim Hye-yoon’s story has a clear message, and it is a practical one. It is this: study hard, work hard, protect your education, take the small parts, learn from them, and be ready when the chance comes, because the chance may come after six years, and it may come in a room full of two hundred other people, and it may change your life in a single day. But the six years are not wasted, and the small parts are not wasted, and the scholarship is not wasted. They are the foundation, and without the foundation, the big part would not have lasted. She built her foundation well, and she is still building on it, and I hope she keeps building, and I hope the next time she walks into a room full of rivals, she remembers the sixteen-year-old girl who first stood in front of a camera, and the student who won a scholarship, and the young woman who waited six years, and I hope she knows that all of those people are still inside her, and that they are the reason she is where she is today.
I want to add something about the nicknames, because they tell a story of their own. My Melody Princess came from a drama about rich families, and it came from the way she dressed, and it is a sweet, gentle name. Nation’s Little Sister is a name that Korean media gives to young actresses who feel like a younger sister to the whole country, and it is a warm, affectionate name. Actress You Can Trust is a different kind of name, and it is the one I like most, because it is not about how she looks, or how old she is, or how sweet she is. It is about her work, and about the feeling that, whatever the story is, she will do it well. A nickname like that is not given lightly, and it is not given to everyone. It is earned, over years, one good performance at a time, and Kim Hye-yoon has earned it. I think that is a good goal for any young person, in any job: to be the person other people trust, the person who does the work well, the person who does not let you down. That is a better goal than being famous, and it lasts longer.
There is also something I want to say about Salmokji, because horror is a new direction for her, and it is a direction that could have gone wrong. A folk horror film is a story about old beliefs, about water, about a place that is beautiful and frightening at the same time, and it asks the actor to be afraid in a way that feels real, not acted. Kim Hye-yoon played it, and the film became a box-office success, and the media began to call her a horror queen, and I think that tells me something about her range. She can be a schoolgirl, a comic-book character, a bulldozer driver, a time traveller, and a woman in a horror film, and she can be all of them without ever looking out of place. That is a rare thing, and it is a thing that comes from the same place as everything else in her career: from study, from patience, from the willingness to learn a new genre, and from the trust that the audience will follow her wherever she goes. I hope she keeps going to new places, and I hope the audience keeps following, because the journey is the best part of the story.
I will end with the sixteen-year-old girl, because that is where I started, and because it is the image I want to leave you with. A sixteen-year-old, on a television set for the first time, in a small part, in a drama called Samsaengi, with no idea that six years later she would be famous, and no idea that eleven years later she would be a star around the world. She did not know any of that, and she did not need to know it. She only needed to do the work in front of her, to learn her lines, to show up on time, to listen, to study, to keep going. That is all any of us need to do, on any day, in any job, in any life. Do the work in front of you, do it well, and trust that the next door will open when you are ready. Kim Hye-yoon did that, and the doors opened, one after another, and they are still opening. I hope they keep opening for her, and I hope they open for you too.
Frequently Asked Questions
How old was Kim Hye-yoon when she first acted on television?
She was sixteen when she made her television debut in 2013, in the KBS drama Samsaengi, playing the teenage version of a supporting character. She had decided in her third year of middle school that she wanted to become an actress. She attended an acting academy and auditioned while she was still at school.
How did a university scholarship shape Kim Hye-yoon’s early career?
She entered Konkuk University in 2015 to study film, and she won a merit-based full scholarship that paid for her studies. To protect her grades, she focused on her studies and took only minor roles during that period. She graduated in February 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in film studies.
How many people tried out for the Sky Castle part Kim Hye-yoon won?
She was chosen from a pool of two hundred applicants to play Kang Ye-seo in Sky Castle, which aired from 2018 into 2019. Ye-seo is the eldest daughter of a rich family, a clever and proud girl who is under great pressure to succeed. The role won Kim Hye-yoon the Best New Actress prize at the Baeksang Arts Awards in 2019.
What is Eun Dan-oh’s strange problem in Extraordinary You?
Eun Dan-oh, played by Kim Hye-yoon in the 2019 MBC drama Extraordinary You, discovers that she is a character in a comic book, and that her life has been written for her. She is meant to be a minor character, but she refuses to accept that fate and tries to change her own story. The drama is based on the webtoon July Found by Chance.
Why did The Girl on a Bulldozer win Kim Hye-yoon so many newcomer awards?
In The Girl on a Bulldozer, released in cinemas in 2022, she played Goo Hye-young, a young woman who drives a bulldozer and tries to protect her family after her father’s accident. The part was tough, angry, and unglamorous, very different from her earlier television roles. Her performance won newcomer prizes at the Blue Dragon Film Awards and the Grand Bell Awards, and a rising-star prize at the New York Asian Film Festival.
Who does Kim Hye-yoon play in Lovely Runner, and what does she try to change?
She plays Im Sol in the 2024 tvN drama Lovely Runner, a young woman who is a fan of the singer Ryu Sun-jae, played by Byeon Woo-seok. Im Sol travels back in time to try to save Sun-jae from a tragedy. The role earned her a first Best Actress nomination at the Baeksang Arts Awards in 2025, and she won the most popular actress prize there.
What did Kim Hye-yoon do in film in 2026?
On 8 April 2026, she returned to the big screen after four years with the folk horror film Salmokji: Whispering Water, which became a box-office success in South Korea. It was her first commercially successful film, and media outlets praised her performance and described her as a horror queen. She also appeared in the SBS fantasy drama No Tail to Tell, which aired in January 2026.
