Let’s go back a little bit. In the 1960s, there were three outstanding actresses, namely, MOON Hee, NAM Jeong-im, and YOON Jeong-hee (Yoon appeared in LEE Chang-dong’s Poetry (2010) after a long hiatus, manifesting her great presence). There came another set of three leading actresses in the 1970s: JUNG Yoon-hee, CHANG Mi-hee and YU Ji-in. From the 1980s until early and mid 1990s, KANG Soo-yeon, the first Korean actress to become a global star, was the leading actress of Korean cinema. Later in the 1990s and early 2000s, JEON Do-yeon won the Best Actress Award at Cannes Film Festival and MOON So-ri became internationally acknowledged.

 

Then people started asking this important question: now, how is the great actress heritage of Korean cinema to be maintained? To be sure, outstanding actresses in their 30s, such as KONG Hyo-jin, LIM Soo-jung, and BAE Doo-na, are actively proving their presence. But then, who are the players in their 20s? There slowly came a worrisome hypothesis of “famine of actresses in their 20s,” suspecting that there are few actresses in their 20s to represent Korean cinema.

 

For the reasons for such hypothesis, the following possibility is illustrated. First of all, there are few films where these young actresses can show off their ability and charm. In other words, too many “he-films” are being made. It is hard to deny such tendency. Isn’t it, however, also true that we have been lazy in exploring hidden gems?

 

This suspicion is becoming all the more convincing, as we have recently witnessed four very clearly promising actresses in their 20s. It is time to pay attention to KIM Go-eun, PARK Bo-young, PARK Shin-hye, and SHIM Eun-kyoung, the new generation to lead Korean cinema.  

Like a comet, KIM Go-eun came to the scene out of the blue, as Eun-gyo in Eungyo (2012). She was barely known before that. By the end of 2012, however, she was known to almost everybody. KIM won several awards in that year and made herself among the most promising young actresses. 

 

Even now, it is hard to believe that Eungyo was her film debut. Her acting was bold, detailed, and fascinating. KIM's role in Eungyo was a high school girl who falls in love with an eminent old author (PARK Hae-il). That role had to be endlessly innocent, fatally hot and also very strong indeed. Finally, while the men in the film encounter catastrophe and despair through their relationship with Eun-gyo, Eun-gyo makes it to the end and goes on to her own path of growing up.

 

A lot of people knew that only KIM could make Eun-gyo such an innocent, stunning and strong character. And such features of hers have influenced her next films as well. Especially her mysterious neutral image with a boyish face and unique strength is accentuated in her later works. In Monster, KIM plays a rather retarded but also mysterious warrior who fights against a killer who murdered her sister. In Coin Locker Girl, she acts a young gangster with a tragic life on the cruel and mean street. She then shows an impressive performance as a young warrior whose life is ridden with karma from her parents in Memories of the Sword.

 

KIM began her career as a girl of fatal charm and is now living the life of a neutral and militant woman. However, we never know what this precious gem will yet turn herself into in the future.

 

 

 

There are two versions of PARK Bo-young, actually. The first one is PARK Bo-young as a promising comedy actress material. Her talent was already fully revealed in Scandal Makers. Or, better say that what made Scandal Makers a big hit was her great comic performance with a good rhythm.

 

The single mother that PARK played in Scandal Makers is bold, audacious and cute. She finds her biological father, who was not even aware of his child, and just settles down to live in his place. Of course she brings her son with her. Such mechanic plot can often be rocky and awkward. However, PARK’s performance outweighs every uncomfortable element in the film. Hot Young Bloods pushes such traits of hers even further. PARK’s good-natured yet audacious high school gangster in the countryside was very cute indeed.

 

And the second version of PARK Bo-young is the horror queen. But let’s not get it wrong: her position in horror and mystery genre is quite special. She is not of the horror prototype characters that are either chased by killer monsters or fight against them. She is still vulnerable and adorable even in a horror and/or a mystery film. Her audacity is not present here. Instead, PARK is an innocent girl, who is so innocent and vulnerable that she seems to possess some mysterious power. That is the type of the characters that she played in A Were Wolf Boy and The Silenced. 

 

There are not many, among actresses in their 20s, who are capable of handling both comedy and horror. PARK is definitely on the lead. 

 

 

In TV series, whoever plays with PARK Shin-hye definitely becomes an Asian star. Or so the rumor goes. LEE Min-ho from The Heirs and LEE Jong-suk from Pinocchio actually did become Asian stars right after the TV series they starred in with her. So the rumor proves itself? Well, this is in fact a dumb question.

 

Let’s put it in another way. How do the actors who played with PARK make their presence shine? Well, no, still not a good question for us. Let’s ask again. What is PARK’s talent? That is her ability to blend with others, to the extent where the counterpart actors are distinctively shining. That is her biggest talent.

 

To be sure, her situation in the film is still somewhat different. In films, PARK has never played a proper leading role. It would be fair to say that her supporting role was so big that it was close to the main role. In Cyrano Agency, PARK is a member of a dating agent team, who help their clients who lack dating skills by creating backdrops and making the situation favorable for their clients to win love, and she was also secretly in love with the head of the team. In The Royal Tailor, she plays the queen who keeps being involved in the lives of two master tailors in Joseon Dynasty. All these characters are not enough to be called the main role. However, even in these films, PARK harmoniously blends in. The role is not big but creates a good atmosphere with her counterparts.

 

A good actress will of course make herself shine. But we remember what Clint EASTWOOD once said. A good performer is the one who is good at the acting of listening to the counterpart. PARK is that kind of good actress. She has the special trait of rising slowly and lasting long.

 

 

 

SHIM Eun-kyoung became 21 years old in 2015 and has a considerably longer filmography and range of acting, compared to other actresses of her age. She made an acting debut when she was about 10 years old and showed a great performance in Hansel and Gretel when she was 14. It is just an ordinary horror film, but this young girl’s performance is truly astonishing. The overall response to this film back then was that there came an acting prodigy.

 

And SHIM never let us down. At 16, she fully expressed a quiet, gloomy, lonely and scared girl in a horror film Possessed. The film itself had a well balanced structure but SHIM’s acting also played a big part in the film.

 

As she was coming of age, she started expanding her acting scope. She made a big leap to be a comedy heroine. In Sunny, SHIM showed a great performance to express the teenager culture in the 1980s in a very comic way, creating the icon of that era. The biggest virtue of this film was the young girl’s hilarious hesitance and shyness played by SHIM. She pushed yet further and accentuated her comedy performance one more time with Miss Granny. The main character that she played was a granny who turned into a girl. Therefore what she had to represent was an old woman, although her appearance was young, and SHIM showed a very impressive performance. Her unique gesture and facial expression created a big laughter, and that is all there is to this film.

 

SHIM has just turned 20, and is accelerating to expand her acting scope. We might as well wait for an action movie and a thriller featuring SHIM in the center. We never know what her limit is.