Shin Jae-ha

Shin Jae-ha is a South Korean actor born on April 2, 1993. He became widely recognized through television dramas in which he has often played younger characters whose warmth, vulnerability, or concealed anger drives crucial plot turns. One of his early standout appearances came in SBS’s 2016 drama special Page Turner. He played Seo Jin-mok, a highly talented young pianist living under the brutal expectations of his father. The three-episode story follows Jin-mok, rival pianist Yoo-seul, played by Kim So-hyun, and former athlete Cha-sik, played by Ji Soo, after an accident disrupts Yoo-seul’s career and changes all three lives permanently.

In 2017, he appeared in While You Were Sleeping, the fantasy legal drama led by Lee Jong-suk, Bae Suzy, and Lee Sang-youb. Shin portrayed Jung Seung-won, the younger brother of prosecutor Jung Jae-chan. The role placed him inside the drama’s central family and legal-world conflicts, while its premise revolves around people who see future events through dreams and try to prevent tragedies. He then joined tvN’s Prison Playbook, playing Kim Min-chul, an inmate. The series was set inside a prison after baseball star Kim Je-hyuk is incarcerated, and it built its narrative around inmates, guards, friendships, and adaptation to confinement.

Shin showed a different side in 2023’s Crash Course in Romance, a tvN series about a former national handball player, Nam Haeng-seon, who enters the competitive private-education world so that her niece can study with mathematics instructor Choi Chi-yeol. Shin played Ji Dong-hui, Chi-yeol’s devoted assistant, who operates under the name “Mr. Ji.” As the drama progresses, Dong-hui’s past and his connection to a deadly series of incidents become central to the thriller element beneath the romantic-comedy setup. The performance gave Shin an antagonistic role opposite Jeon Do-yeon and Jung Kyung-ho, and his character’s motives were revealed rather than explained.

His television work includes Welcome to Waikiki 2, where he played Yoon Ki-bong, one of the adults trying to keep the guesthouse Waikiki operating. In 2022, he made a guest appearance in Extraordinary Attorney Woo as Kim Chan-young, a defendant in the episode “If I Were a Whale.” That episode concerns a lottery-winner’s dispute involving a ticket and a prize, providing a courtroom role within the ENA drama about lawyer Woo Young-woo. Across these projects, Shin Jae-ha has moved between youth dramas, ensemble comedy, prison, legal narratives, and a mystery plot, earning attention for the reversal embodied by Ji Dong-hui.