KANGSOO-YEON

The year she turned 3, she became a contract child actress with Tongyang Broadcasting Company (TBC). Around 1976 her first connection with the film world came through Blood Relations. In 1982 she appeared mainly in teen films such as The Sesame Salt and the Ugly.

The breakthrough yearThe year she turned 17, KBS’s A High School Student’s Diary began, and the show made her a teen star and made her name known.

In 1985 she made her first appearance as an adult actress in Whale Hunting 2. In 1987 Mimi and Cheolsu’s Youth Sketch was the top-grossing Korean film of the year, and she received the Grand Bell Awards Best Actress for Now, We Are Going to Geneva. For The Surrogate Woman she won Best Actress at Venice, the first prize at one of the world’s three major film festivals for a Korean actor. In 1989 she won Best Actress at the Moscow International Film Festival for Come, Come, Come Upward.

In 1991 she appeared in Berlin Report and Road to the Racetrack. In 1992 she received the Blue Dragon Film Awards Best Actress for Road to the Racetrack. In 1993 she appeared in The Blue in You.

In 1995 she appeared in Go Alone Like a Rhino’s Horn. In 1998 she became an executive committee member of the Busan International Film Festival and appeared in Girls’ Night Out. In 2000 she received the Tokyo International Film Festival special prize and the Baeksang Arts Awards Best Acting Award, among others, for Rainbow Trout.

In 2001 she played Jeong Nan-jeong in SBS’s Ladies of the Palace, and that December she shared the SBS Drama Awards grand prize with Jeon In-hwa. In 2011 she appeared in Im Kwon-taek’s Hanji. Hankyoreh writes that it was her last commercial film. In 2013 she appeared in the short film Juri.

The year she turned 49, she became co-chair of the Busan International Film Festival. In 2017 she ran the 22nd festival as its chair. The year she turned 56, she died on May 7. In November she was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit (Silver Crown).

In January 2023 her last work, JUNG_E, was released on Netflix, and in May a first anniversary retrospective was held.

Kang Soo-yeon (born 1966) debuted in 1969, the year she turned 3, as a TBC contract child actress, and became known in 1983, the year she turned 17, through KBS’s A High School Student’s Diary. In 1987, the year she turned 21, she won Best Actress at Venice for The Surrogate Woman, the first prize at one of the world’s three major film festivals for a Korean actor.

Ages are by calendar year (the year minus the birth year), birthdays aside.