From Hollywood to Korean dramas, these are Jun Ji-hyun’s best works so far.
When Jun Ji-hyun first appeared in the Korean movie My Sassy Girl in 2001, it established her as one of the leading actresses of her generation. This has been a label she has continued to grow even today, decades after the release of the film that launched her career to all-new heights. The actress was born in the country’s capital city, Seoul, and despite originally having a dream of becoming a flight attendant, she decided to try out modeling when she was in high school. A year later, she debuted as an actress. Her career first began in television, but in 2000, her first big appearance in Il Mare generated quite a bit of buzz, which then was followed with a surge of popularity after My Sassy Girl.
In the years to come, Jun would continue appearing in South Korean movies, but also branched out into Hollywood. She made appearances in some American films, but her career seemed like it would be potentially fizzing out. The release of The Thieves in 2012 changed that, and, when My Love From the Star was aired on Korean television and abroad, it re-established why she was one of the biggest actors of her time. Here are Jun’s best movies and television shows that have come out so far.
Lee Soo-yeon directed 2003’s The Uninvited, which stars Jun Ji-hyun, Yoo Sun, Park Shin-yang, and Kim Yeo-jin. Park portrays Jung-won, and interior decorator who agonizes over his wedding that’s going to be happening quite soon. But when he ends up falling asleep on the subway one day, he wakes up and realizes there are two girls next to him. He leaves them there and goes home, but not long after that, he overhears on the radio that two girls were poisoned on the subway. The two girls begin to haunt him, and he wants to find a solution for it, leading him to a psychiatrist and in the path of Jung Yeon (Jun), who has her own problems to deal with.
Blood: The Last Vampire was Jun Ji-hyun’s Hollywood debut, and she began going by the name Gianna Jun in the West. She starts as Saya, a half-human half-vampire working within Tokyo; her job is to hunt down vampires, and she sometimes works with an established council. For her next gig, she has to go undercover on an air base school, and she ends up killing all the vampires while they’re bullying another student. So begins a tale of revenge and going against the establishment as the human girl and Saya team up.
Hong Kong director Andrew Lau is behind Daisy, which pairs Jun with Jung Woo-sung and Lee Jung-jae. She portrays Hye-young, an artist who gets by sketching portraits of the people willing to pay her a meager fee. However, when a hitman falls in love with her after witnessing her make art in action, and he tries to make her move subtly. He sends her daisies at the same time every day, and although she has no idea who he is or why someone’s sending her flowers, she ends up believing a detective is the one behind the mysterious gifts.
2015’s Assassination is Jun Ji-hyun’s last movie so far, and it became one of the most popular Korean movies ever released when it came out in theaters. The film is set in colonial Korea, and when a plot to kill a businessman fails, one of his daughters is taken away. Years pass, and that daughter, Ahn Ok-yun (Jun), grows up to become a resistance fighter. She becomes involved with a plot to take down several influential figures. Unfortunately, that will put her in the path of her former family.
The television series Jirisan is named after a national park in South Korea, but this series has an air of mystery about it. Seo Yi-kang (Jun) is a parker ranger at Jirisan National Park, and she is considered to be one of the elite rangers due to her knowledge of the area. When she meets Kang Hyun-jo (Ju Ji-hoon), a new recruit that has had visions of death happening in the area, it will become a big problem when they come to realize there are many secrets and mysteries tucked inside the beloved national park. Suddenly the two will come to question everything they’ve believed in so far throughout the course of the series.
Lee Min-ho and Jun Ji-hyun star in the drama series Legend of the Blue Sea, which aired on Korean television back in 2016. Set across two different time periods but reflecting the same story, Lee Min-ho portrays a con artist tormented by the gaps in his memories. As it turns out, when in Spain, he met a mysterious woman (Jun) who’s actually a mermaid. She travels to Seoul in order to find him, and as the show switches back between past and present, it shows how these two were destined for each other across centuries.
The Berlin File came out in 2013, and Ha Jung-woo and Jun Ji-hyun star. Ha is a North Korean spy, Jong-seong, who ends up going on a doomed mission that makes him realize that someone was out to get him. At the same time, a South Korean agent, Jin-soo, is trying to find out his true identity and apprehend him, but a larger plot is afoot. Jong-seong now has to navigate the changing circumstances of his situation, which sucks his wife, a translator in Berlin (Jun), into this mess with him.
The first original Korean series to be put out by Netflix, Kingdom is plenty of fun to watch. It’s set in Joseon during the 1500s, and after a big historical war happens, an illness is being found throughout the kingdom. First the king falls ill, and when the Crown Prince, Lee Chang, tries to find out what’s wrong with his father, he ends up realizing there’s an entire epidemic across the country that brings the dead back to life. At the same time, he’s struggling with maintaining power on the throne. Jun Ji-hyun appears as a guest star in the second season as well as the spin-off.
One of the more iconic movies of the early 2010s, The Thieves would eventually become one of the highest-grossing Korean movies ever released. After a big heist is planned in South Korea, a team of six gathers for the biggest one they’ve ever done. They head off to Hong Kong and plan to rob a casino of a diamond that’s worth millions of dollars, but when some new members from Hong Kong are added to the team, it leads to more problems. No longer able to trust each other, this becomes a game of wits and patience.
Lee Jung-jae and Ji Ji-hyun star in 2000’s Il Mare, which was directed by Lee Hyun-seung. A woman named Eun-joo (Jun) is preparing to move out of a seaside house when she leaves a note behind saying the next resident should forward the mail to her new address. But when a man named Sung-hyun opens up the mailbox two years before, he is majorly confused as to how a card from the future got to him. As it turns out, the mailbox can be used across time to communicate, and the two begin actively communicating.
One of Jun Ji-hyun’s best known roles, My Sassy Girl isn’t to be missed in one’s rotation of what to watch next. An engineering student named Gyeon-woo meets a drunk girl outside the train station one day, but even when their interaction goes completely wrong, as she ends up throwing, he can’t help but to be attracted to her. The rest of the movie is about how they keep interacting with each other, and, eventually, their relationship goes through many twists and turns.
My Love From the Star was a global event when it first came out, as its popularity went beyond the borders of South Korea. Kim Soo-hyun is an alien who came to Earth many centuries ago, and he is now waiting for the perfect chance to go back home. But when he crosses paths with an actress with a messy image (Jun), the two become much closer than expected. When a romance brews between them, he has to make the executive decision on whether he will go back home or stay with her.
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Ashley Hajimirsadeghi is an Iranian American multimedia artist, journalist, and writer from Baltimore, Maryland. Her creative poems, essays, and fiction have appeared in print and digital magazines, and she is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, the University of Arizona, the US State Department, and Brooklyn Poets. Her editorial work has appeared in MovieWeb, Smithsonian Magazine, and Screen Queens, among others. Currently she is a second-year M.A. Candidate in Global Humanities at Towson University.