Born in 1955 to actress JEONG Ae-ran, YE Soo-jung has been surrounded by theater since her youngest age, as her mother would breastfeed her at the Space-Time Theater (now Myeong-dong Art Theater) and other actors would look after her while her mother was on stage. She saw her first play at around 4. Yet, at first, she didn’t aim for an acting career. An avid reader of Goethe and Rilke's work, she studied German literature at the Korea University. Impressed by Marlon BRANDO�...More

Born in 1955 to actress JEONG Ae-ran, YE Soo-jung has been surrounded by theater since her youngest age, as her mother would breastfeed her at the Space-Time Theater (now Myeong-dong Art Theater) and other actors would look after her while her mother was on stage. She saw her first play at around 4. Yet, at first, she didn’t aim for an acting career. An avid reader of Goethe and Rilke's work, she studied German literature at the Korea University. Impressed by Marlon BRANDO’s performance in <The Godfather>, she became interested in acting and while searching for acting lessons she ended up at the Goethe Institute in Seoul, where they offered her to join Freie Bühne, a company comprised mainly of German language students that was supported by the institute. After a first performance in a production of <The Broken Jug> in 1973, she was invited to join the drama club of her college, with which she would perform many plays, including a stage adaptation of André SCHWARZ-BART’s novel <A Woman Named Solitude> in 1979. Her passion for Brecht’s repertoire led her to study in Germany, where she eventually completed a master’s degree in dramatics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, followed by an acting training course at the Münchner Volkshochschule. She wouldn’t resume her career until much later, joining Theater Moollee after getting married and becoming a mother. YE first appeared on the big screen in the 2001 indie film <Nabi-The Butterfly> and scored a large number of small roles such as in the cult movie <Save the Green Planet> (2003). She was offered more important roles in the period drama <Hwang Jin Yi> (2007), the horror picture <Epitaph> (2007) and Hong Sangsoo’s <Like You Know It All> (2008). Meanwhile, her stage career was thriving more than ever, with several prestigious acting awards. Although she is usually seen in supporting roles, her participation in some of the most successful movies of the last decade, such as <The Thieves> (2012), <TRAIN TO BUSAN> (2016) and <Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds> (2017), have made her one of the most recognizable faces of Korean cinema. She has also earned a lot of esteem for her role in the drama <Herstory> (2017), which dealt with the reparations for wartime sexual slavery committed by the Japanese Army during the Occupation. 2018 saw her win her first film accolade, the Korean Fantastic Best Actress from the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, for <Land of Happiness> (2018). In 2019, she was offered the lead role in another drama on sexual crimes, <An Old Lady> (2019), first presented at the Busan International Film Festival. YE Soo-jung is also the sister-in-law of the TV and film actor HAN Jin-hui.Less