Kim Yoo-jung – Biography, Age, Korean Dramas & Movies

↻ tap the card to flip

Rom-Com · Bright Lead

김유정

Kim Yoo‑jung

KDW Fan Rating

Editorial scoring by KDW — not an objective metric.

Acting Skill88

Charisma85

Versatility93

Popularity90

Career Balance

Supporting (27)(16) Lead

Age26 years 11 months 10 days

NationalitySouth Korean

AgencyAwesome ENT (previously Sidus HQ)

Debut2003

🏆Award
Winning

24Dramas

26Films

KDRAMAWORLDS.COM

👩‍💼 Who Is Kim Yoo-jung?

In November 2025, Kim Yoo-jung played a sociopath who hides a cruel nature behind a beautiful face, and Dear X promptly went to number one in 108 countries. Baek Ah-jin, the manipulative social climber at the center of TVING’s thriller, sits about as far as possible from the sunlit period dramas that first made Kim famous, and The Korea Times called her performance “chilling.” At twenty-six, she was doing the least expected thing available to her: turning ugly on purpose.

That range didn’t appear overnight. Kim has been on Korean screens since she was four years old, cast in a snack commercial before she could read, and by the time most actresses are auditioning for their first lead role she already had thirteen dramas and fifteen films behind her. Historical epics gave her a career-defining nickname, “Sageuk Fairy”; a school-uniform romance turned her into “Moonlight Syndrome”; a teen romance renamed her “Nation’s First Love.” Dear X is just the newest alias in a resume that keeps adding them.

📌 Quick Profile

🚀 Career Timeline

Biography

🏡 Early Life

Kim Yoo-jung was born in Seongdong District, Seoul, on September 22, 1999, the youngest of three siblings. Her parents fostered an early interest in performance by sharing classic films with her, and she responded by mimicking characters she’d seen on screen around the house. Her older sister, Kim Yeon-jung, would go on to become an actress herself, debuting in 2017.

That mimicry got her enrolled in a local performing arts school as a child, which is where a talent scout eventually found her. She was five, tagging along to a contest her sister had entered, when she ended up winning the event’s Most Popular Award despite never being an official contestant. It was enough to launch her into child modeling almost immediately, and acting followed soon after.

🎤 Career Beginnings

She debuted in a Crown Confectionery commercial at age four in 2003, and the work didn’t stop coming. By the time she reached fifth grade, Kim had already appeared in thirteen television dramas and fifteen films, enough to earn her the nickname “Nation’s Little Sister” while she was still a literal child. She has credited the 2005 film All for Love with igniting her actual passion for acting, rather than just being handed roles because she photographed well.

Most of that early work cast her as the young version of an established character, but 2010’s Grudge: The Revolt of Gumiho gave her something different — a part built around her, not around someone she’d eventually grow into. Two years later, Moon Embracing the Sun made the difference obvious to everyone else too: the fantasy-period drama crossed 40 percent ratings and was declared a “national drama,” and Kim collected Best Young Actress wins at both the inaugural K-Drama Star Awards and the 2012 MBC Drama Awards for a performance that was, once again, technically a supporting one.

🎬 Acting Style

Historical dramas made Kim’s reputation before she was even a teenager, and the nickname that stuck, “Sageuk Fairy,” still describes the bulk of what she’s best known for — Dong Yi, Painter of the Wind, Love in the Moonlight, Lovers of the Red Sky. Critics single out her ability to carry a scene on subtle glances and small gestures rather than big swings, and her crying scenes in particular are consistently described as sincere rather than performed. It’s a register that rewards restraint, which is unusual for an actress who started this young.

Dear X tested how far that restraint could stretch. Playing Baek Ah-jin, a woman who conceals real cruelty behind a composed exterior, pushed Kim into psychological-thriller territory she hadn’t attempted before, and The Korea Times credited her performance with “anchoring” the show’s story of trauma and manipulation. She’d already picked up the “Nation’s First Love” nickname three years earlier for 20th Century Girl, proof the range runs in more than one direction — sweet coming-of-age romance and calculating villainy from the same actress, a few years apart.

🛟 Legacy

Kim ranked 8th on the Forbes Korea Power Celebrity list in 2017, the youngest name in that year’s Top 10 at seventeen. Love in the Moonlight, the drama that got her there, produced a genuine cultural moment the following year — “Moonlight Syndrome” became shorthand for the show’s runaway popularity, and it’s still the reference point most often cited when people explain how a child actress crossed over into leading adult roles without the usual growing pains. Two decades between a snack commercial and a psychological thriller is a long career by any measure; managing to stay commercially relevant for nearly all of it is the harder trick.

That relevance was formalized in September 2025, when the Busan International Film Festival named her the first-ever recipient of its new Busan International Actors Award. Her public profile extends past acting credits, too: she became the 229th, and youngest, patron of ChildFund Korea’s Green Noble Club in 2019, a group reserved for individuals who’ve donated at least 100 million won, and she has kept making six and seven-figure won donations to children’s and elderly welfare causes in the years since — not campaign appearances, just a habit she’s kept up quietly.

🎥 Notable Works & Iconic Roles

Dear X (2025)

Lovers of the Red Sky (2021)

20th Century Girl (2022)

Clean with Passion for Now (2018)

Backstreet Rookie (2020)

Chicken Nugget (2024)

Dear X (2025)

Lovers of the Red Sky (2021)

20th Century Girl (2022)

Clean with Passion for Now (2018)

Backstreet Rookie (2020)

Chicken Nugget (2024)

🎞️ Filmography

🥇 Awards & Honors

📅 Recent & Upcoming Projects

Kim closed out a hit run of romantic titles with My Demon (2023–2024), playing chaebol heiress Do Do-hee opposite a memory-losing demon — a fantasy romance popular enough domestically to earn her Best Actress and Best Couple at the 2023 SBS Drama Awards. She followed it with a brief comic cameo in Netflix’s Chicken Nugget (2024) before pivoting hard into TVING’s Dear X (2025), playing manipulative social climber Baek Ah-jin in what The Korea Times called a “chilling” performance — the series topped OTT charts in 108 countries within days of release.

Next up is 100 Days of Deception, a tvN period spy romance set during the Japanese occupation of Korea, in which she plays Lee Ga-kyeong, Gyeongseong’s top pickpocket working undercover as an interpreter. It’s slated for the second half of 2026 and marks a return to the historical genre that built her career, this time from the other side of the law.

🤝 Brand Ambassador

💖 Personal Life

In February 2018, she was diagnosed with a thyroid gland dysfunction (hypothyroidism) and took a hiatus from acting for treatment and surgery, a break that disrupted filming on her drama Clean with Passion for Now.

🎈 Fun Facts

• She made her debut as a child model for Crown Confectionery at age four in 2003.
• By the time she was in fifth grade, she had already appeared in 13 television dramas and 15 films.
• She has said she learned to read Hangul by studying her own scripts as a child actress.
• In October 2019, ChildFund Korea named her the 229th — and youngest-ever — patron of the Green Noble Club, reserved for donors who have given at least 100 million won.
• She has made repeated large donations, including 100 million won to the Korea Pediatric Cancer Foundation in February 2024 and another 100 million won split between elderly care and disability support in October 2024.
• She hosted the weekly music show Inkigayo from November 2014 to April 2016.
• She made her stage debut in January 2023 in the play Shakespeare in Love, playing Viola de Lesseps.
• She appeared in Room 731, an English-language short horror film directed by USC filmmaker Kim Young-min.

💬 Quotes

🔎 Discover More

Discover more actor profiles you might find interesting below :