Lee You-mi

Read her credits from 2010 forward and you can watch a career being assembled out of scraps. The Yellow Sea (2010) lists her as Tae-won's Daughter. Hwayi: A Monster Boy (2013) has her as Yoo-kyung's Friend 1. Rough Play, the same year, as Ad Girl. Will You Be There (2016) as Yeon-ah's Staff. Scent of a Ghost (2019) as Student. That is a decade of being the person a scene requires and never the person it is about.

Independent film gave her room first: a character named Se-jin in both Park Hwa-young (2018) and Young Adult Matters (2021), plus Everyone Is There (2020). Television in the same period stayed supporting, in Welcome to Waikiki, Doctor John, My Holo Love and 365: Repeat the Year.

Then Squid Game in 2021, as Ji-yeong, Player 240, and a Primetime Emmy for outstanding guest actress in a drama series, the first won by a Korean actress in that category. The award is precisely calibrated to what she does. A guest performance gets one chance to make you care about a stranger, and she takes it with a conversational ease that the show's louder performances never reach.

Since then she has been handed the leads. All of Us Are Dead (2022) gave her the least sympathetic role in a large ensemble horror series and she played it without once asking for the audience's forgiveness. Strong Girl Nam-soon (2023) is broad comedy and she carries it easily. Mr. Plankton (2024) and As You Stood By (2025) suggest she has no intention of settling into a single register.