Lee Sung-min
Lee Sung-min is an actor, born 1968.
For years Lee was a supporting player, and the credits are blunt about how far down the call sheet he sat. He is the Cook in Secret Sunshine, the Chef in The Good, the Bad, the Weird, a friend of the coach in Marathon, an editor-in-chief in Bestseller. That is a long stretch of Korean cinema's strongest period spent at the edge of the frame.
Television changed his standing. Recognition came through Golden Time in 2012 and Misaeng: Incomplete Life in 2014, and he won Best Actor at the Baeksang Arts Awards for Misaeng and again for Reborn Rich in 2022, where he plays the founding patriarch Jin Yang-chul.
What he is good at is authority with something rotten inside it. Read the character list: Chief Prosecutor in The Unjust, Prosecutor General in Black Money, President Park in The Man Standing Next, Jung Sang-ho in 12.12: The Day. Lee plays men who run things, and specifically the private calculation going on behind the official face. He almost never raises his voice. The menace is in how long he takes to answer.
The counterweight is comedy, which directors keep rediscovering: Handsome Guys in 2024, Mr. Zoo: The Missing VIP, and the plain human warmth of Oh Sang-shik on Misaeng. The recent run has gone heavy again with No Other Choice in 2025 and the series Teach You a Lesson, but the range is wider than the prosecutors and presidents suggest.
Movies (52)
- No Other Choice (2025)
- The Moon (2023)
- Hunt (2022)
- 12.12: The Day (2023)
- The Witness (2018)
- Real (2017)
- The Unjust (2010)
- Secret Sunshine (2007)
- The 8th Night (2021)
- The Spy Gone North (2018)
- The Drug King (2018)
- The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008)
- The Man Standing Next (2020)
- Miracle: Letters to the President (2021)
- A Violent Prosecutor (2016)
- The Attorney (2013)
- The Beast (2019)
- The Devil's Deal (2023)
- Kundo: Age of the Rampant (2014)
- Handsome Guys (2024)
- All About My Wife (2012)
- Hit-and-Run Squad (2019)
- Remember (2022)
- Howling (2012)
- The Piper (2015)
- Boss (2025)
- Big Match (2014)
- Hostage: Missing Celebrity (2021)
- A Wonderful Moment (2013)
- Mr. Zoo: The Missing VIP (2020)
TV (21)
- Teach You a Lesson (2026)
- Juvenile Justice (2022)
- Just an Excuse (2022)
- Reborn Rich (2022)
- Incomplete Life (2014)
- Hwajung (2015)
- Blue Dragon Series Awards (2022)
- Shadow Detective (2022)
- Entourage (2016)
- The Queen Who Crowns (2025)
- The Tyrant (2024)
- The King 2 Hearts (2012)
- On Air (2008)
- A Bloody Lucky Day (2023)
- Miss Korea (2013)
- SUCHWITA (2022)
- Golden Time (2012)
- Memory (2016)
- Gloria (2010)
- The Devil (2007)
- Can You Hear My Heart? (2011)
Where to start with Lee Sung-min
Incomplete Life is the entry point and it is not a close call. Lee plays Oh Sang-shik in a workplace drama with no crimes and no villains in it, and it is the warmest thing he has done.
For the opposite extreme, Reborn Rich gives him a conglomerate founder played as cold arithmetic. On film, The Spy Gone North is his best and least showy work, an espionage picture built out of careful conversation where every sentence costs somebody something. The Attorney and The Man Standing Next bracket his political roles, one from below and one from the very top.
If you want the crowd-pleasers, Hunt and 12.12: The Day drop him into big ensemble thrillers, Juvenile Justice is the courtroom version, and Handsome Guys proves he can play broad comedy without looking down at it.