Lee Kyung-young

Lee Kyung-young is a veteran South Korean actor and film director with a very long career. He is known for strong and serious roles, often as a rich boss, a politician or a man with a dark secret. New fans may know him from big dramas like Vagabond, Stranger and Dr. Romantic.

Lee Kyung-young is 173 cm (5 ft 8 in) tall and weighs about 64 kg, according to his published profile.

Early life

Lee Kyung-young was born on December 12, 1960, in Chungju, North Chungcheong Province. He was the youngest child in a big family with four sons and two daughters. His family was poor, and his mother supported them with needlework. As a young man, he did many hard jobs before acting. He later studied theatre and film at Hanyang University, which helped him start his acting life.

Career and breakthrough

He made his film debut in 1987 with a small role in the film Yeonsan Diary and soon played the lead role of Su-ryong in Adada. In the early 1990s, he became one of the top film actors in Korea. Fans still remember his work in Praise of Death (1991) and White Badge (1992). He also worked behind the camera and wrote and directed the films The Gate of Destiny (1996) and The Beauty in Dream (2002).

Popular roles

On television, he played the cold company head Lee Yun-beom in Stranger (2017). In Vagabond (2019), he played Edward Park, a key man in a story full of secrets and danger. In Dr. Romantic (2016), he played Cha Jin-man, a proud doctor who brings strong conflict to the story. Film fans also know him as Jang Pil-woo in Inside Men (2015) and from the hit film The Terror Live (2013).

Recent work

Lee Kyung-young never really stopped working. He acted in The World of the Married in 2020 and in Again My Life in 2022. In 2023, he joined Queenmaker and Moon in the Day. He also appeared in High School Return of a Gangster in 2024. With so many films and dramas over almost forty years, he remains one of the most familiar faces in Korean stories.