Shin Hye-sun

The Girl Who Drove Her Own Car

Shin Hye-sun didn't have an easy road. During his college years in Sejong, he spent his time auditioning for celebrity roles that didn't even have names in the credits. He repeated that process hundreds of times before anyone noticed his profile.

She grew tired of waiting.

In 2012, she landed a tiny role in School 2013 after auditioning on her own. She had to cut her hair very short to stand out among the other background students, and she had no agent. She drove herself to the set because no agency wanted to sign an actress whom they considered too tall for the standards of the time.

But her height ended up being a visual asset on screen. In 2015, she appeared in Oh My Ghost and She Was Pretty in supporting roles that allowed her to start negotiating more serious contracts.

The Phenomenon of the Fifty Episodes

In 2017, she accepted the role of Seo Ji-an in My Golden Life. It was fifty episodes of intense family drama. The pressure was enormous because KBS depended on those ratings to save the advertising year, and critics doubted her ability to carry the weight of such a long storyline.

And the gamble paid off.

That project reached a 45.1 percent share of the audience in its final episode. It was exactly when cosmetics brands began competing for her face. That same year, she played prosecutor Young Eun-soo in Stranger, and her character's death in the story sparked a wave of protests on Korean online forums.

So the international market set its sights on her. In 2019, she spent six months learning ballet to film Angel’s Last Mission: Love, where she practiced an average of seven hours a day. She aimed for technical perfection so that wide shots wouldn't have to rely on a lighting double.

The Risks of Physical Comedy

In 2020, she took on Mr. Queen. Playing a 21st-century man trapped in the body of a Joseon-era queen demanded complete control over her body language. But the series came under attack for alleged historical distortions that nearly sank the production during its first week on air.

Despite the complaints, audiences backed Shin's work. The series finished with a 17.4 percent audience share and ranked among the five most-watched cable TV series in Korean history.

In 2023, she starred in See You in My 19th Life and the rural drama Welcome to Samdal-ri. On the latter project, she worked alongside Ji Chang-wook on Jeju Island, under weather conditions that forced the shooting of the outdoor scenes to be delayed for several weeks.

But she prefers the pace of suspense cinema. In May 2024, she premiered the thriller Following alongside Byun Yo-han. The film sold 1.2 million tickets in its first three weeks at the Korean box office and closed its commercial run with a total gross of 8.4 million dollars.