# Son Ye-jin

Son Eon-jin (Korean: 손언진; born January 11, 1982), better known by her stage name, Son Ye-jin (손예진), is a South Korean actress who rose to fame in 2003 in The Classic and Summer Scent, which were followed by the commercially successful A Moment to Remember (2004). Her early roles in films garnered her the title "Nation's First Love" in Korea.
Son has since won accolades and starred in other high-profile films, including My Wife Got Married (2008), The Tower (2012), The Pirates (2014), The Last Princess (2016), and Be with You (2018). She has also acted in popular television dramas, such as Alone in Love (2006), Something in the Rain (2018), and Crash Landing on You (2019–2020). Between 2019 and 2022, she appeared on Forbes Korea Power Celebrity 40 for four consecutive years.

## Career
### 2000–2005: Beginnings and East Asia Stardom

Son Ye-jin was the voice of Jung Mi-jo in Park Ki-hyung's film Secret Tears in 2000, and then took leading roles in television dramas such as Delicious Proposal, Sun-hee and Jin-hee, and Great Ambition. Her first high-profile role in cinema was in Im Kwon-taek's Chi-hwa-seon, which screened at Cannes and took home a Best Director award in 2002.
The biggest successes of her early career were in the films Lovers' Concerto and The Classic. Both were films mid-level hits in Korea, and The Classic in particular — being a work of My Sassy Girl director Kwak Jae-yong — received wide exposure in Hong Kong and Mainland China, and launched Son's East Asia stardom. Son further solidified her status as a Hallyu (Korean Wave) star in 2003 by taking the lead in TV drama Summer Scent, the third installment of the season-themed tetralogy Endless Love directed by Yoon Seok-ho.
Her next films also gained wide popularity in East Asia, particularly in Japan: A Moment to Remember, based on a famous Japanese series, set box office records in Japan and sold over two million tickets in Korea, and April Snow, in which she co-starred with superstar Bae Yong-joon, which was also a hit in Japan and China. Son, who assumed a pure and innocent image in her films The Classic and A Moment to Remember, was given the title of the "Nation's First Love" in Korea.
In 2006, Son became the highest-paid Korean actress in Korean television series when she was guaranteed a talent fee of KRW 50 million (plus incentives) per episode for her lead role in the SBS drama Alone in Love.

### 2006–2015: Film Roles in Diverse Genres

Son cast off her nice girl image in her next projects. She played a con artist in The Art of Seduction, an ambitious reporter in Spotlight, a femme fatale in Open City, and a divorcée in the critically acclaimed series Alone in Love. In 2008, her portrayal of a polyandrous woman in My Wife Got Married won her Best Actress honors from the prestigious Blue Dragon Film Awards and other local bodies.
After filming the dark mystery White Night, Son acted in the romantic comedy series Personal Taste, followed by the horror-romantic comedy film Spellbound, which became one of the top-grossing films in 2011, and by far the most successful Korean romantic comedy movie in recent years.
In 2012, Son starred in her first blockbuster, The Tower, a remake of the 1974 Hollywood disaster film The Towering Inferno. She returned to television in 2013 in the revenge drama Shark (also known as Don't Look Back: The Legend of Orpheus), then headlined Blood and Ties, a thriller about a daughter who suspects that her father was involved in a kidnapping-murder case.
Son reunited with Shark co-star Kim Nam-gil in the 2014 period adventure film The Pirates, which received mixed reviews but was a commercial hit with more than 8.6 million admissions at the end of its theatre run, and which won Son the Best Actress award at the Grand Bell Awards. The Pirates was one of the highest-grossing Korean films of all time, along with other Son Ye Jin's movies, The Tower and The Last Princess. Son next starred in the black comedy Bad Guys Always Die opposite Taiwanese actor Chen Bolin, a Chinese-Korean co-production that was filmed on Jeju Island.

### 2016–present: Critical acclaim and global recognition

In 2016, Son reunited with My Wife Got Married co-star Kim Joo-hyuk in The Truth Beneath, a political thriller, for which she received critical acclaim. She won Best Actress at the 25th Buil Film Awards and 17th Busan Film Critics Awards for her performance. Son next played Princess Deokhye in the biopic The Last Princess, directed by April Snow director Hur Jin-ho. The film drew positive critical reviews and went on to become a box office hit, grossing US$40.35 million worldwide. Sung So-young of the Korea JoongAng Daily praised the film for being "interesting enough to hold the audience's interest from beginning to end," even though she felt the screenwriter's (Hur) imagination went too far in several scenes. She said major events from Princess Deokhye's life were portrayed well, and the film's biggest virtue was how it made audiences want to know more about her. Rumy Doo of The Korea Herald said Son Ye-jin proved herself a "sensitive and technically refined performer." Son was praised by critics for her "outstanding" performance in her portrayal of "the unfathomable depths on the emotional ups and downs of Deokhye," winning multiple accolades for her performance.
In 2018, Son starred alongside So Ji-sub in the romantic film Be with You, based on the Japanese novel of the same name. That same year, Son returned to the small screen after five years with JTBC's romantic drama Something in the Rain. The series achieved commercial popularity, and Son received rave reviews for her performance. Son also starred in the crime thriller The Negotiation, alongside Hyun Bin, playing a professional negotiator working to save hostages.
In 2019, Son reunited with Hyun Bin in the global hit romantic drama Crash Landing on You as a wealthy heiress who falls in love with a North Korean commissioned officer. The drama was a huge success and is the fifth-highest-rated Korean drama in cable television history.
Son was scheduled to have her Hollywood debut in 2022, starring opposite Sam Worthington in filmmaker Andrew Niccol's work The Cross, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, her agency requested a delay in filming.

## Other activities
### Philanthropy

On February 27, 2020, Son donated ₩100 million to Community Chest of Korea in Daegu to help fight the spread of COVID-19. Daegu is Son's hometown.
On March 8, 2022, Son and Hyun Bin donated ₩200 million to the Hope Bridge Disaster Relief Association to help those affected by the massive wildfire of Uljin forest fire 2022, which devastated the area and then spread to Samcheok, Gangwon Province, South Korea.

## Personal life

Son is a Roman Catholic and her baptismal name is Dominica.

### Relationship and marriage

On January 1, 2021, it was confirmed that Son had been in a relationship with actor Hyun Bin, her co-star in The Negotiation (2018) and Crash Landing on You (2019–2020), since the prior year, after Crash Landing on You had concluded.
On February 10, 2022, Son and Hyun Bin announced their engagement in letters posted on their social media accounts. They married in a private ceremony on March 31, attended by their parents and friends of both families. On June 27, Son announced that she was pregnant with the couple's first child; she gave birth to a son, whom she affectionately nicknamed Alkong, on November 27.

## Filmography
### Film

List of film appearances :
| Year | Title | Role | Note |
| 2000 | Secret Tears | Jung Mi-jo | voice |
| 2002 | Chi-hwa-seon | So-woon | |
| 2002 | Lover's Concerto | Shim Soo-in / Gyung-hee | |
| 2003 | The Classic | Ji-hye / Joo-hee | |
| 2003 | Crazy First Love | Ju Il-mae | |
| 2004 | A Moment to Remember | Kim Su-jin | |
| 2005 | April Snow | Seo-young | |
| 2005 | The Art of Seduction | Han Ji-won | |
| 2007 | Yobi, the Five Tailed Fox | Yobi | voice |
| 2008 | Open City | Baek Jang-mi | |
| 2008 | My Wife Got Married | Joo In-ah | |
| 2009 | White Night | Yoo Mi-ho / Lee Ji-ah | |
| 2011 | Spellbound | Kang Yeo-ri | |
| 2012 | The Tower | Seo Yoon-hee | |
| 2013 | Blood and Ties | Jung Da-eun | |
| 2014 | The Pirates | Yeo-wol | |
| 2015 | Bad Guys Always Die | Ji-yeon | International co-production |
| 2016 | The Truth Beneath | Kim Yeon-hong | |
| 2016 | The Last Princess | Princess Deokhye | |
| 2018 | Be with You | Im Soo-ah | |
| 2018 | The Negotiation | Ha Chae-yoon | |
| TBA | No Other Choice | Mi Ri | Filming |

### Television series

List of television series appearances :
| Year | Title | Role | Note |
| 2001 | Delicious Proposal | Jang Hee-ae | |
| 2001 | Sun-hee and Jin-hee [ko] | Shim Sun-hee | |
| 2002 | Great Ambition [ko] | Choi Dong-hee | |
| 2003 | Summer Scent | Shim Hye-won | |
| 2006 | Alone in Love | Yoo Eun-ho | |
| 2008 | Spotlight | Seo Woo-jin | |
| 2010 | Personal Taste | Park Kae-in | |
| 2011 | Secret Garden | Herself | Cameo (episode 20) |
| 2013 | Don't Look Back: The Legend of Orpheus | Jo Hae-woo | |
| 2018 | Something in the Rain | Yoon Jin-ah | |
| 2019–2020 | Crash Landing on You | Yoon Se-ri | |
| 2022 | Thirty-Nine | Cha Mi-jo | |

## Awards and nominations

Son has won 51 awards of 72 nominations.