This week our spotlight is on Han Ye-seul, whose newest drama Big Issue just premiered on SBS. In the drama, she stars opposite Joo Jin-mo, playing the editor-in-chief of a notorious tabloid and chaser (and perhaps creator) of celebrity scandals.
Han Ye-seul was born in 1981 and raised in Los Angeles, California. Her professional career started in 2001, when she won SBS’s Supermodel Contest. The following year was her debut as an actor, with a small part as a flight attendant on the sitcom Daebak Family. 2003 saw her make strides in her acting career with a turn in the fourth season of the popular sitcom Nonstop. In 2004, Han gave up her American citizenship to become a naturalized South Korean citizen.
Like many Korean-Americans who left the States to pursue careers in the South Korean entertainment industry, Han Ye-seul met with her fair share of bumps in the road to success. From the production (and professional) disaster that was 2011’s Myung-wol the Spy, to the usual celebrity scandals around financial holdings, dating, and plastic surgery, Han Ye-seul is a very interesting choice to play Big Issue’s paparazzo goddess.
Below are some dramaland moments from Han Ye-seul, followed by her full filmography.
Myung-wol the Spy (2011)
I didn’t watch Myung-wol the Spy myself, but this drama is now infamous for its behind-the-scenes production drama. It. Was. Crazy. Han Ye-seul starred as the eponymous heroine and North Korean spy that was meant to kidnap the top Hallyu actor played by Eric. It sounds like a fun premise for a rom-com with a side of action, plus a bit of a role reversal (I would have expected the spy to be played by the male, and the Hallyu star to be the female character, if I were blindfolded and guessing). But with all of its headline-making production disasters and domino effect of live-shoot snafus, this is one case where the drama outweighed the drama. Han Ye-seul’s reputation took an enormous hit, and as a consequence, she put her career on hiatus and didn’t star in a production again until 2014’s Birth of a Beauty. If anything good came out of that mess, perhaps it was some much-needed light shed on the grueling expectations of live-shoot productions. Unfortunately, I’m not convinced much has changed since then.
20th Century Boy and Girl (2017)
I love a good story of childhood friends falling in love as adults, and 20th Century Boy and Girl was such a sweet telling of this kind of story. While the bulk of K-dramas are feel-good stories, sometimes there are dramas that do this especially so, and for me, 20th Century Boy and Girl was one of those. It didn’t do anything groundbreaking, it didn’t have a plot full of barriers and roadblocks — it was rather a simple story, and I loved it for that. In the drama, Han Ye-seul played a top actress. Usually, that means full-on lovable diva (like Yoo Inna in Reach of Sincerity, for instance), but Han Ye-seul’s character was refreshingly innocent, still hung out with her childhood friends, and lived in the apartment above her parents and had breakfast with them every morning. Kim Ji-suk, who for me is always a fun balance of sweet, silly, and sincere, played the boy she grew up with. All in all, 20th Century Boy and Girl managed to do light and sweet without making you feel like you lost some IQ points while watching, which deserves at least a round of applause.
Big Issue (2019)
With the premiere episodes under my belt, I have to say this drama is way darker and sleeker than I expected. Light-hearted, feel-good drama it is not. Rather, we have (at least so far) a stylish, noir, and a little bit risque story — not your usual primetime fare. Han Ye-seul plays the femme fetale editor of her paparazzo world, and Joo Jin-mo is a washed-up “moral photographer” with a complicated history. The entire first episode is set on a luxury train, and it has such an old, swanky vibe, like Mission Impossible gone noir. The last drama I saw with a tone similar to this was Heartless City, so I’m curious to see how closely the drama keeps to the mood set in the first few episodes. It will also be interesting to see how the drama treats our hero and heroine who are clearly both people who have comprised their integrity (or been very tempted to), in the name of something larger.
Han Ye-seul’s full filmography: