Lim Ji-yeon

Lim Ji-yeon came into Korean film the slow way, through short films and stage work, and then arrived all at once. Her first feature role, in the 2014 melodrama Obsessed, won her Best New Actress at the Grand Bell Awards and put her on every other new-actress shortlist that year.

The decade that followed was busier than it was celebrated. She worked steadily in film, in The Treacherous, Luck-Key, Tazza: One Eyed Jack and Spiritwalker, without a role that fixed her in the public mind, which makes 2022 look sudden from outside and probably did not feel that way to her. Park Yeon-jin in The Glory is a genuinely difficult assignment: a school bully who grew up rich and unpunished, and who has to stay charming while the audience knows exactly what she is. Lim plays her with a flick of contempt just under the surface, and the Baeksang Arts Award for Best Supporting Actress followed.

Since then she has been handed leads rather than support. Lies Hidden in My Garden and The Killing Vote came in 2023, the action film Revolver in 2024, and the historical drama The Tale of Lady Ok, where the whole series rests on her. The romantic comedy My Royal Nemesis lands in 2026, which is the first time in a while that anyone has asked her to be light.