Choi Min-sik

The Muscle of Korean Acting

Choi Min-sik doesn't act with the usual gestures of commercial cinema. His method involves a physical toll that often frightens his co-stars. While filming Oldboy (2003), he ate four live octopuses because the story demanded it, even though his Buddhist faith forbade it. That sacrifice was only the beginning of an international reach nobody expected from Seoul.

Before the cameras came the stage. He trained at Dongguk University and spent the 1980s on the stage, searching for a truth that the heavily censored cinema of the era did not allow. His first real break came with Kuro Arirang (1989), but mass recognition took a decade to arrive.

And then came the year 1999.

With Shiri, Korean cinema proved it could go head-to-head with Hollywood blockbusters. Choi played a North Korean agent with a chilling coolness that made your blood run cold. The film sold more than six million tickets and broke South Korea's box office records at the time.

The Price of Political Integrity

His career has not been a straight line of constant success. In 2006 he decided to halt his professional activity to protest cuts to screen quotas in his country. The South Korean government wanted to make it easier for American films to enter the market, and Choi stood in the streets of Seoul holding protest signs to defend local productions.

He returned his Order of Cultural Merit as a gesture of contempt for government policies.

That decision cost him four years of near-total silence in the industry. Many thought his time had passed, because the market forgets quickly those who cause trouble. But he returned in 2010 with I Saw the Devil, directed by Kim Jee-woon. In this film he played a serial killer so brutal that he later confessed to having nightmares for months after wrapping production.

Box office records and the leap to streaming

The actor has never sought refuge in likable roles. In The Admiral: Roaring Currents (2014), he took on the responsibility of playing national hero Yi Sun-sin. The pressure was enormous, since he portrays a sacred figure in Korean culture, and any mistake would have been unforgivable to critics.

The result was a financial earthquake.

Seventeen million moviegoers flocked to theaters to see his performance. It remains the most-watched film in South Korean history. But Choi didn't get stuck in period films, and in 2022 he agreed to star in the series Big Bet for a global streaming platform. It was his return to television after twenty-six years of voluntarily staying away from the format.

His ability to draw audiences has not faded over the decades. In February 2024 he premiered Exhuma, a supernatural thriller in which he plays a geomancer who specializes in graves. The film drew ten million viewers in just thirty-two days of release. The film's budget was approximately 14,000 million won.