Gong Hyo-jin

Gong Hyo-jin (Korean: 공효진; born April 4, 1980) is a South Korean actor known for film and television work. Born in Seoul, she moved with her family to Australia in 1991, lived there for several years, and returned to South Korea in 1997. She attended Sejong University, where she studied film.

Her screen debut was in Memento Mori (1999), directed by Kim Tae-yong and Min Kyu-dong and the second film in the Whispering Corridors series. The film follows pupils at a girls’ high school haunted by the aftermath of two students’ relationship and deaths. Gong then appeared in Volcano High and Guns & Talks (both 2001), two commercially Korean releases.

A major television breakthrough came with Sang-doo! Let’s Go to School (2003), in which she played Chae Eun-hwan, the former love of a man who becomes a gigolo to support his daughter. Her later series included Thank You (2007), Pasta (2010), The Greatest Love (2011), Master’s Sun (2013), It’s Okay, That’s Love (2014), The Producers (2015), Jealousy Incarnate (2016), and When the Camellia Blooms (2019).

In Pasta, she portrayed Seo Yoo-kyung, a kitchen assistant pursuing her ambition to become a chef while clashing with a demanding head chef. The Greatest Love cast her as Gu Ae-jung, an ex-idol trying to revive her career amid a public romance with a top actor. In Master’s Sun, she played Tae Gong-sil, whose ability to see ghosts brings her into the orbit of a wealthy executive.

Her film roles include an insecure teacher in Lee Kyoung-mi’s Crush and Blush (2008), a woman dealing with jealousy and humiliation, and a woman who enters a marriage of convenience in the romantic comedy Love Fiction (2012). She also starred in Missing (2016), a thriller about a mother searching for her missing child and the babysitter who disappeared with her.

For When the Camellia Blooms, Gong played Dong-baek, a single mother running a bar in the fictional town of Ongsan while facing gossip and a serial-killing case. Her performance earned her the Grand Prize (Daesang) at the 2019 KBS Drama Awards. Gong married singer-songwriter Kevin Oh in October 2022.

She returned to television in 2024 with the Netflix series The Trunk, adapted from Kim Ryeo-ryeong’s novel. In it, she played Noh In-ji, an employee of a company that arranges fixed-term contract marriages. The Netflix adaptation was released on November 29, 2024. It co-starred Gong Yoo as Han Jeong-won.