Kim Hee-won

Kim Hee-won is a South Korean actor born on January 10, 1971, in Namwon, North Jeolla Province. He studied at Seoul Institute of the Arts and spent years working in theater before becoming widely recognized on screen. His film breakthrough came with Lee Jeong-beom’s 2010 action thriller The Man from Nowhere, in which he played the cruel criminal Man-seok. The film starred Won Bin as a reclusive former special agent pursuing kidnappers after a neighboring child is taken. Kim’s performance established a screen persona often used by filmmakers: a controlled, threatening antagonist whose menace is delivered without excessive display.

That reputation led to prominent supporting parts in crime and action films. In The Merciless (2017), director Byun Sung-hyun’s prison gang drama, Kim portrayed Cheon In-gu, a senior figure in the criminal hierarchy surrounding Im Si-wan’s undercover policeman and Sol Kyung-gu’s veteran gangster. He also appeared in The Admiral: Roaring Currents (2014), Kim Han-min’s historical blockbuster about Admiral Yi Sun-sin’s 1597 naval battle, and in the 2017 film 1987: When the Day Comes, which dramatizes events surrounding the death of student activist Park Jong-chul during South Korea’s authoritarian Fifth Republic. These projects placed him in commercially successful and historically oriented cinema.

Television broadened Kim’s public profile beyond villain roles. In tvN’s workplace drama Misaeng (2014), adapted from Yoon Tae-ho’s webtoon, he played senior manager Park Jong-sik at the trading company One International. The series follows former baduk prodigy Jang Geu-rae, played by Im Si-wan, as he struggles as an inexperienced contract employee. Kim later joined the cast of the 2023 Disney+ series Moving, based on Kang Full’s webtoon. He portrayed Choi Il-hwan, a National Intelligence Service official connected to the story’s cross-border conflict involving people with abilities. Moving also featured Ryu Seung-ryong, Han Hyo-joo, Zo In-sung, Lee Jung-ha, and Go Youn-jung.

In 2024, Kim expanded his work behind the camera by making his directing debut with Light Shop, a Disney+ mystery drama adapted from a webtoon by Kang Full. The series is set around a shop that draws visitors connected to death and the afterlife. Kim had previously acted in Moving, another adaptation of Kang’s work, making Light Shop a notable continuation of that association. As an actor, he has repeatedly worked with material that mixes genre entertainment with sharply drawn institutional settings. His credits include the 2019 film The Divine Fury, starring Park Seo-joon as a fighter confronting demonic forces.