Kim Go-eun

Kim Go-eun (born July 2, 1991) is a South Korean actor whose screen career began with Jung Ji-woo's 2012 film A Muse (Eungyo). She was born in Seoul and spent much of her childhood in Beijing after her family moved to China when she was four. She returned to Korea in 2004. In A Muse, adapted from Park Bum-shin's novel, she played Han Eun-gyo, a high-school student who becomes involved with an elderly poet and his younger disciple. The demanding debut immediately made her a major new face in Korean cinema. Her performance earned the Blue Dragon Film Award for Best New Actress and recognition from other Korean awards bodies. Rather than moving directly into familiar romantic leads, Kim selected sharply different early roles. In Hwang In-ho's Monster (2014), she portrayed Bok-soon, a woman with an intellectual disability pursuing revenge against a serial killer. In Han Jun-hee's Coin Locker Girl (2015), she was Il-young, a girl abandoned in a subway locker and raised by a criminal organization around Incheon. The film premiered in the Critics' Week section at Cannes and gave her another formidable character. She then appeared in the historical martial-arts fantasy Memories of the Sword (2015) and played a mother and former Miss Korea contestant in Canola (2016), opposite veteran actor Youn Yuh-jung. Television enlarged her audience without displacing that film work. In 2016, she starred as Ji Eun-tak in tvN's Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, widely known as Goblin. Her character is a high-school student who can see ghosts and becomes connected to an immortal goblin played by Gong Yoo. The series became a major cable hit. She followed it with the 2018 adaptation of Cheese in the Trap, playing Hong Seol, a diligent university student navigating an unsettling relationship with Yoo Jung, portrayed by Park Hae-jin. In 2021, she led the fantasy romance Yumi's Cells as Kim Yumi, a office worker whose thoughts are represented by animated cells. Her recent roles include Oh In-hye in Little Women (2022), a tvN drama inspired by Louisa May Alcott's novel and centered on three financially struggling sisters. In Jang Jae-hyun's occult mystery film Exhuma (2024), she played Lee Hwa-rim, a young shaman enlisted to investigate a wealthy family's supernatural affliction. Exhuma became an enormous Korean box-office success and brought Kim a Best Actress award at the 60th Baeksang Arts Awards. Her work spans dramas and popular genre productions.