Yoo Hae-jin was Korea's favorite everyman. Then came 'The Assassin(s)'

The character actor turned box office king has charmed audiences for nearly three decades. A movie about a 1974 assassination has put him in the middle of political crossfire

It is not every day that an actor needs police protection over a movie role. Yoo Hae-jin is finding out what that’s like.

On Oct. 6, police said they had given the 56-year-old a smartwatch to call for help in an emergency and stepped up patrols near his home. Two days earlier, dozens of protesters had gathered outside his house in northern Seoul.

Yoo's offense, as it were, was starring in "The Assassin(s)," a journalism thriller that reimagines the 1974 shooting death of then-first lady Yuk Young-soo, wife of President Park Chung-hee. The film has drawn fury among Korea’s conservatives for floating a decades-old conspiracy theory that the incident was an inside job by Park’s own men, an idea many on the right, who still revere him as a national hero, find deeply insulting and slanderous.

Hardly anyone expected Yoo to become the target of such vitriol given that, until now, he had been considered one of Korea's most likable actors. His career has climbed steadily for nearly three decades, from scene-stealing bit parts to a string of 10-million-ticket megahits.

The scene-stealer

Yoo got his start onstage, joining a theater troupe in his hometown of Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, while still in high school. He was rejected from drama schools more than once, reportedly because he didn't have movie-star looks; it was only at 25, after completing his military service, that he finally got into one.

Hoodlum roles came first, starting with bit parts and with a goofy streak. In the madcap cult comedy "Attack the Gas Station" (1999), Yoo played a rival gang boss with such punk bravado that co-star Cha Seung-won, as the story goes, asked the director whether he'd hired an actual gangster. The cop thriller “Public Enemy” (2002) cast him as yet another crook, this time a small-time hood.

Fame arrived with "The King and the Clown" (2005), the 12-million-ticket smash hit in which he played a wisecracking street jester. A year later, he was back as a fast-talking hustler in “Tazza: The High Rollers” (2006), the first installment of what became a long-running gambling franchise.

By the 2010s, Yoo had become one of the most dependable scene-stealers in the business, with a range to match. He could go dark and spine-chilling, as a menacing henchman in the thriller "Moss" (2010), or play it for big laughs as in the swashbuckling period romp "The Pirates" (2014).

The hit parade

By the mid-2010s, the hits were piling up, and with them, bigger roles. The streak began with "Veteran" (2015), a crowd-pleasing cop comedy that pits a maverick cop (Hwang Jung-min) against a sociopathic chaebol heir (Yoo Ah-in). Yoo played the heir’s groveling right-hand man. The film went on to sell 13.4 million tickets, one of the decade's biggest hauls.

2016’s “Luck Key” showed once and for all that the actor could carry a movie alone. In the life-swap comedy, Yoo’s slick hitman wakes up with amnesia in someone else’s life, setting up plenty of slapstick and dumb fun. It became one of the year’s surprise hits with nearly 7 million admissions.

Then came his banner year: In 2017, Yoo's name was on three of the year's biggest local hits. The buddy-cop actioner "Confidential Assignment" paired his hapless detective with Hyun Bin's stone-faced North Korean agent.

"A Taxi Driver" is a ground-level take on the 1980 Gwangju Democratic Uprising, and Yoo supplies much of its heart as a local cabbie who takes in a driver from Seoul (Song Kang-ho) and a German journalist (Thomas Kretschmann). Lauded at home and abroad, it racked up more than 12 million tickets. A few months later came "1987: When the Day Comes," with Yoo as a prison guard who secretly helps the political prisoners behind bars.

Both were politically charged period dramas about ordinary people standing up to the military dictatorship of the 1980s, a chapter of modern history the country remains divided over.

Post-pandemic glory

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic gutted the film business, Yoo kept picking winners. In the occult horror hit "Exhuma" (2024), he played an unflappable undertaker alongside Choi Min-sik and Kim Go-eun. The film sold 11.9 million tickets, the most of any Korean release that year.

Earlier this year, "The King's Warden" went straight into the record books. Drawn from real history, Jang Hang-jun's modestly budgeted period drama became a national phenomenon few saw coming, selling 16.9 million tickets to rank as the second most-watched film in the country's history. Yoo anchors the tearjerker element as the village chief who ends up looking after Danjong, the deposed boy king, with whom he forms an unlikely bond.

"The Assassin(s)" was supposed to be his victory lap. As a dogged detective who pays dearly for refusing to let a cover-up stand, Yoo brings the same earnestness and big heart that have marked his best work.

Beyond the big screen

In contrast to his big-screen career, Yoo rarely appears on TV. But when he does, it's usually on reality shows, most notably "Three Meals a Day," a hit series that sends celebrities to remote rural villages to cook each meal with whatever they can find.

Over five seasons since 2015, Yoo's easy chemistry with fellow actor and longtime friend Cha Seung-won has been a key part of its appeal. While Cha runs the kitchen, Yoo fishes, fixes things, builds fires and keeps the dad jokes flowing, though he’s comically inept at the stove.

In 2010, Yoo set the tabloids ablaze when he and Kim Hye-soo, one of Korea’s most glamorous A-listers, went public with their relationship. The pair first met on the set of the 2001 comedy “Kick the Moon” and reportedly grew close while shooting “Tazza” five years later.

The couple confirmed their breakup in 2011, but have apparently stayed on good terms ever since. At a year-end awards show in 2016, the former lovers were spotted greeting each other and chatting warmly. In 2021, they reunited with the rest of the “Tazza” cast for a photo spread marking the original’s remastered rerelease. Neither has married yet.