Few actors in Korean entertainment history have had a career as rich, as varied, and as triumphantly culminating as Lee Jung-jae (이정재). Born on December 15, 1972, in the Jung District of Seoul, Lee Jung-jae is considered one of South Korea's most successful actors, having received numerous accolades including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Critics' Choice Television Award, and six Baeksang Arts Awards, in addition to nominations for a Golden Globe Award and a Gotham Award. His journey from a café worker in Apgujeong-dong to a globally recognized star is a story of talent, perseverance, and a remarkable friendship that has become the stuff of Korean pop culture legend.
Lee Jung-jae was discovered by designer Ha Yong-soo while working at a café in Apgujeong-dong, then worked as a fashion model for a number of years. He made his acting debut with the 1993 TV drama Dinosaur Teacher, and almost immediately began landing lead roles. Born on December 15, 1972, he began modeling in 1993 before getting his first acting roles in the film The Young Man (1994) and the TV series Feelings (1994) and Sandglass (1995), which is one of the highest-rated Korean dramas of all time with a peak rating of 64.5%.
Sandglass (모래시계, 1995) was a sweeping historical drama that captured the turbulent political landscape of South Korea from the 1970s through the 1980s. He played one of the central figures in this epic, and the performance earned him the Best New Actor award at the Baeksang Arts Awards. The drama's extraordinary ratings made Lee Jung-jae a household name virtually overnight, cementing his status as one of the most promising young actors of his generation.
His next significant television appearance came with Feelings (느낌), a romantic drama that played perfectly into the public's growing fascination with Lee's combination of brooding good looks and natural screen charisma. City of the Rising Sun (태양은 없다, 1999) — more on that pivotal film shortly — also appeared on television in serialized form, further solidifying Lee's dual presence in both film and the small screen. Later, he starred in Chief of Staff (보좌관, 2019), a JTBC political drama in which he played a sharp and morally complex political advisor navigating the cutthroat corridors of power in Seoul. The drama was praised for its taut writing and Lee's commanding performance, and it marked his return to television after nearly a decade away from the medium.
Lee's film career truly took off after his breakthrough in An Affair (1998). Directed by E J-yong, the film is a quietly devastating erotic drama about an illicit romance between two people whose lives are entangled by circumstance and desire. He plays the male lead with a restrained intensity that impressed critics and audiences alike. The film was a departure from his earlier, more conventional roles, and it announced that he was willing to take bold artistic risks.
This film is not simply a milestone in Lee Jung-jae's career — it is the origin story of one of the most beloved friendships in Korean entertainment. Lee Jung-jae and Jung Woo-sung starred together in this dynamic drama, which was the first collaboration between the two Korean stars. In the film, Jung Woo-sung played an unsuccessful boxer who befriends an unlucky swindler. He plays the swindler opposite Jung's boxer, and the chemistry between the two tall, strikingly handsome actors was electric. The film earned Lee Jung-jae the Best Actor award at both the Blue Dragon Film Awards and the Korean Association of Film Critics Awards.
One of his most beloved films, Il Mare is a lyrical, time-bending romance about two people living in the same house two years apart, communicating through a magical mailbox. He plays Han Sung-hyun, an architect who falls in love with a woman he can never quite meet. Though not a massive commercial hit upon its release, the film has since developed a loyal fan base and attained the status of a minor classic among Korean cinema fans. Keanu Reeves later played Lee's role in the 2006 Hollywood remake The Lake House.
In Last Present, Lee Jung-jae starred opposite the luminous Lee Young-ae in a heartbreaking melodrama about a terminally ill woman and the man who loves her. It was a showcase for Lee's ability to carry emotional weight without melodramatic excess. The Last Witness, directed by veteran filmmaker Bae Chang-ho, saw him return to darker territory — a mystery thriller involving a decades-old murder case. Both films demonstrated his range and his bankability at the box office.
A crowd-pleasing comedy about two brothers, one of whom has an unusual disease, Oh! Brothers showed Lee's lighter, more comedic side. Starring opposite Lee Beom-soo, the film was a welcome departure from the brooding dramas that had defined much of his work, proving that Lee Jung-jae could command laughs as easily as tears.
One of the biggest-budgeted Korean films of its era, Typhoon is a high-octane action thriller involving a rogue North Korean agent and a South Korean military operative. He plays the determined South Korean soldier tasked with stopping a catastrophic attack. The film was a major commercial event in Korea, further establishing him as one of the country's premier leading men.
After a brief career lull, Lee Jung-jae rejuvenated his career in the high-profile 2010 erotic thriller The Housemaid, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. Lee Jung-jae won a Best Actor award at the Fantasporto Director's Week. A remake of the 1960 classic, the film is a stylish and unsettling tale of class, desire, and domestic power, in which he plays a wealthy patriarch whose obsession with his housemaid unravels his entire world. The film marked Lee's triumphant return to top-tier Korean cinema.
Lee Jung-jae joined a star-studded ensemble cast for The Thieves, a 2012 heist film that became the second all-time highest-grossing movie in Korean cinema history at the time of its release. A fast-paced, witty caper film in the vein of Ocean's Eleven, it features him as one of a group of skilled thieves attempting to steal a diamond from a Macau casino while double-crossing each other at every turn. He was magnetic and cool in the ensemble, holding his own alongside a roster of Korea's biggest stars.
Perhaps Lee Jung-jae's most critically acclaimed film performance, New World is a neo-noir crime masterpiece about an undercover police officer who has spent years embedded in the Korean mob. He plays the tortured protagonist, a man so deep undercover that the line between cop and criminal has all but disappeared. With a simmering intensity and moral ambiguity rarely seen in Korean commercial cinema, Lee Jung-jae delivered what many consider a career-defining performance.
The Face Reader is a lush historical drama set in the Joseon Dynasty, in which Lee Jung-jae plays a man with the supernatural ability to read people's fates through their faces. It was a massive box office hit. Assassination, set in Japanese colonial-era Korea, is a slick action thriller about a team of Korean independence fighters tasked with killing a Japanese commander. He plays a morally complex mercenary, and the film broke records domestically.
Most of these blockbuster films drew north of 12 million admissions at the domestic box office, with The Thieves (2012) and Along with the Gods (2017) each becoming the second-biggest Korean hit in history at their respective times of release. In Along with the Gods, he plays a military deity who judges the souls of the dead. In Svaha, he takes on the role of a Christian pastor investigating a sinister cult. In Deliver Us from Evil, Lee Jung-jae reunites with Hwang Jung-min in a visceral action thriller set partly in Thailand. Each film demonstrated Lee's seemingly effortless ability to anchor diverse genres.
In September 2021, Lee Jung-jae starred as Seong Gi-hun, the main protagonist of Netflix's hit survival drama Squid Game. Series creator and director Hwang Dong-hyuk said he chose to cast him as Gi-hun as to "destroy his charismatic image portrayed in his previous roles." The gamble paid off spectacularly. Gi-hun is a lovable loser — a gambling-addicted, debt-ridden father who enters a deadly competition for a chance to win billions of Korean won. The character is everything Lee's previous iconic roles were not: rumpled, desperate, emotionally raw.
Lee Jung-jae became the first Asian actor ever to be nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and was also nominated for Best Actor at the Golden Globes, the Critics' Choice Awards, and the Gotham Awards. He went on to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2022, making him the first person to win that award for a non-English-speaking role, and the first Asian man to win that Emmy.
No profile of Lee Jung-jae would be complete without discussing the friendship that has made both men larger-than-life figures in the Korean public consciousness. Jung Woo-sung is best friends with Lee Jung-jae, whom he met while filming City of the Rising Sun. They are co-owners and co-investors of several businesses, including management agency Artist Company.
The two men are inseparable in the Korean public imagination — tall, handsome, talented, and fiercely loyal to each other. Lee Jung-jae also founded several companies he co-owns with Jung Woo-sung. In May 2016, Lee and Jung established and became CEOs of their entertainment label Artist Company.
Their on-screen reunion came in 2022 with Hunt (헌트), Lee Jung-jae's directorial debut feature. The two top movie stars, who became close while filming City of the Rising Sun, have long been showing off their friendship both on and off the screen. Set in 1980s Korea against the backdrop of a military coup, Hunt is a tense spy thriller in which both men play rival intelligence agents hunting for a mole within the Korean CIA. At the press conference, he said he had to ask his best friend to take the role four times before he finally accepted. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Lee Jung-jae was asked why he thinks Korean culture is so popular. "It is our mix of sorrow and joy," he said. "We do emotions well."
The friendship between Lee Jung-jae and Jung Woo-sung is, in many ways, a mirror of the best qualities of Korean cinema itself: passionate, unafraid of sentiment, and built to last. Whenever one name is mentioned, the other inevitably follows — a testament to the rare, enduring bond forged on a film set over two decades ago that has only grown stronger with time.
Lee Jung-jae's career is a monument to what sustained excellence looks like. From the brooding rebel of City of the Rising Sun to the Emmy-winning everyman of Squid Game, he has never stopped evolving — and the world is finally catching up to what Korean audiences have known for thirty years.
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Samie | contact@kdramaforhealing.com