Career
His notable films include Joint Security Area (2000), Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Save the Green Planet! (2003), and Welcome to Dongmakgol (2005) and Pier Piper
Shin Ha-kyun first trained as a stage actor at the Seoul Institute of the Arts before going on to act in a large number of plays by Jang Jin. When in 1998 Jang Jin directed his first movie The Happenings, Shin was cast and he has since appeared in almost all of Jang"s feature films.
Impressed by his acting abilities, director Kim Jee-woon also cast him in minor roles in The Foul King and his 30-minute internet film Coming Out.
Shin first became a superstar with his role as a young North Korean soldier in Park Chan-wook"s smash hit Joint Security Area in late 2000. In the next couple years Shin would take on two strong roles that would come to define his career.
In Park Chan-wook"s acclaimed Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, he played a deaf man with bright green dyed hair who is driven by desperation to kidnap a young girl.
Then in Jang Joon-hwan"s Save the Green Planet! in 2003, he played a mentally unbalanced man who believes that aliens are plotting to invade the earth.
Together, these two intense and harrowing performances by Shin were an impressive display of his acting talent. Also noteworthy are Shin"s performances in two very different films set during the Korean War -- Welcome to Dongmakgol, a dramedy that takes place in a small mountainous village, and The Front Lincolnshire, a harrowing tale of soldiers fighting over a small, bomb-blasted hill that regularly changes hands. Primarily a film actor, Shin had previously done only one television series, 2003"s Good Person on MBC. But in 2010 he returned to television in the quirky mystery Harvest Villa which aired on cable channel tvN. He then played a septuagenarian whose body magically reverts to his thirties in the 2014 comedy series Mr.
Back.
Shin next gave a villainous turn as an evil mastermind game planner in the action-thriller Big Match. In 2015, he headlined his first period film with Empire of Lust, playing a distinguished admiral of the recently established Joseon empire.
