Story of North Korean Defector and Her Grandchildren to Air on Global OTT Platform in 2022 

Youn Yuhjung, who recently became Korea’s first Academy Award-winning performer, has been offered a leading role in the upcoming drama A Tree Dies Standing (translated title). Also approached to star were Son Yejin and Kang Haneul. According to their respective agencies, all three actors are currently reviewing their offers. 

Youn has been offered the role of Ja Geumsoon, a 90-year-old woman born in North Korea but separated from her family during the Korean War. Now residing in the south, she runs Korea’s top hotel chain, Hotel Paradise. Son and Kang have been approached to appear as her grandchildren, one who works hard for the hotel business and the other who tries to make his grandmother’s last wish of meeting her North Korean family comes true.

Following her debut in Kim Kiyoung’s Woman of Fire (1971), Youn has had a venerable career, which has included roles in Im Sangsoo’s A Good Lawyer’s Wife (2003), The Bacchus Lady (2016) and most recently the American film Minari, for which she earned the Best Supporting Actress Award at this year’s Academy Awards. She is currently shooting the Apple TV+ series adaptation of the best-selling novel Pachinko.

Son Yejin was last seen in the small hit Korean drama Crash Landing on You opposite Hyun Bin. She has another drama, Thirty-Nine, on the way in 2022. Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet (2015) actor Kang Haneul has several projects on the way, including The Pirates: Goblin Flag, the sequel to the hit 2014 swashbuckler that incidentally starred Son Yejin.

Though neither a cast nor a platform has been finalized, A Tree Dies Standing is expected to be released on a global streaming platform at some point in 2022.