SONG Kang-ho has become a representative symbol of the male actor in the Korean film industry. In the late 1990s, he was widely accepted as one of the three male actors, along with actors Choi Minsik and Sul Kyunggu, who were dominating Korea’s film industry. Casting him in the lead role almost always guarantees a box-office hit. His unique comedic acting ability, shown in <The Number Three>, <The Quiet Family>, and <The Foul King>, received rave reviews ...More

SONG Kang-ho has become a representative symbol of the male actor in the Korean film industry. In the late 1990s, he was widely accepted as one of the three male actors, along with actors Choi Minsik and Sul Kyunggu, who were dominating Korea’s film industry. Casting him in the lead role almost always guarantees a box-office hit. His unique comedic acting ability, shown in <The Number Three>, <The Quiet Family>, and <The Foul King>, received rave reviews from the public, but so did his more dramatic performances in <Joint Security Area (JSA)>, <Memories of Murder>, and <Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance>. Whether he is playing a man who becomes a gangster solely out of material need in <The Show Must Go On> (2007), a passionate father in <The Host>(2007), or a garage owner so ordinary as to be scary in <The Secret Sunshine>, he constantly proved the depth and breadth of his acting ability. With <The Good, the Bad, and the Weird> (2008) and <Thirst> (2009), directed by his long-time acquaintances Kim Jeewoon and Park Chanwook, he successfully portrayed new characters in genres wholly different from anything he had done before. The huge success of <Secret Reunion> in 2010 proved again that Song Kangho is a powerful force in the Korean movie industry. Uncharacteristically, Song failed to draw large crowds for his next two films, the genre pics <Hindsight> in 2011 and 2012’s <Howling>. However, the star came roaring back in 2013, when he recorded the most successful year of any Korean actor, after starring in three back-to-back hits, namely Bong Joonho’s long-awaited sci-fi blockbuster <Snowpiercer>, the Chuseok holiday period drama <The Face Reader> and the smash hit courtroom drama <The Attorney>. The total viewers tally for his films soared over 30 million during the year, and he added several acting awards to his growing collection, most notably the Grand Prize in Film at the Baeksang Arts Awards. Following a well-earned break that left him absent from screens in 2014, Song next teamed up with Lee Joonik for the period drama <The Throne>, playing King Yeongjo, the Korean ruler who infamously had his belligerent son, the Crown Prince Sado (played by YOO Ah-in), suffocated to death in a large wooden chest filled with rice. In 2016, Song teamed up with Kim Jeewoon for the fourth time on the Colonial Era action-thriller <The Age of Shadows>, the first local production of Hollywood studio Warner Brothers. Based on real events, the historical drama <Taxi Driver> (2017) allowed him to add another title to his list of films that crossed the symbolic 10 million admissions threshold. Reuniting with Bong, Song reached new heights with the internationally acclaimed <PARASITE> (2019). Also in 2019, he was handed the Excellence Award at the Locarno International Film Festival. His performance in Koreeda Hirokazu’s <Broker> (2022) allowed him to pick up Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival. As a symbol of the range of his roles, the film released in Korea around the same time as another of his recent films, the aerial disaster movie <Emergency Declaration> (2022) Less