Actor You Need to Know: Ryu Jun-yeol

Ryu Jun-yeol promptly rings a bell about Reply 1988 ((2015–2016), the third season of the timeless Reply series—it’s a trip down memory lane to a Seoul neighborhood where five childhood friends have each other’s back to get through their challenging adolescent years and set their futures in motion, while their parents work through the issues they face as an extended family.

Ryu’s rendition of Kim Jung-hwan—a stoic and witty sporty member of the group, Jung-hwan, also goes by Jung-pal. Frequently feeling obligated to achieve his older brother’s aspirations due to his chronic heart disease, Jung-hwan is a highly emotion-driven guy who buries his feelings behind his wry humor and sour demeanor—deftly etched by Ryu amid the cast from the award-winning series for the depth and nuance he gave him on the emotional spectrum.

The prolific Chungmuro actor, 37, made his name through shorts and indie movies that were distinctive in style and subjects; it led him to Reply 1988, his big break, netting a flurry of awards.

His characters’ tenacity unifies each of his performances. Films have been a constant in Ryu’s career; in 2015, he made his feature debut with Socialphobia, which won him the KAFA Film Festival’s Rising Star award. Ryu appeared in the coming-of-age film One Way Trip, the crime thriller No Tomorrow, and as the lead [for the first time] in the webtoon-based romantic-comedy series Lucky Romance in 2016, everywhere incorporating varying layers in his portrayals, rendering them tangible and plausible a lot more.

The King, a 2017 political crime drama film with Zo In-sung and Jung Woo-sung, was one of his consecutive ventures that served to further his reputation. Choi Doo-il, portrayed by the actor, is a gang chief who backs Zo’s Tae-soo in his professional ascent. He took home the 53rd Baeksang Arts Awards’ Best New Actor in Film title for The King, which became one of the highest-grossing South Korean movies of the year.

Next up, he appeared with Song Kang-ho and Yoo Hae-jin in the biopic road movie A Taxi Driver that same year, the highest-grossing South Korean film of 2017 and the twelfth highest-grossing South Korean film in history. Ryu had Gu Jae-sik, a naive college student, in the film, where a taxi driver from Seoul becomes unwittingly embroiled in the upheavals of the Gwangju Uprising in 1980. In the bargain, Ryu featured in the courtroom thriller Heart Blackened—with Choi Min-sik and Park Shin-hye—involving a father who spares no effort to exonerate his daughter from charges after she is accused of murdering his lover. The case turns into a curveball when Ryu’s Kim Dong-myeong reveals CCTV evidence.

Films and more films since then Ryu Jun-yeol has been serving his calling as an actor with impressive, high-profile roles in smashing films like Little Forest (2018), Believer (2018), Hit-and-Run Squad (2019), Money (2019), The Battle: Roar to Victory (2019), Alienoid (2022), and The Night Owl (2022). He is also a photographer, an activist dedicated to social and environmental advocacy, and a scholarship recipient from the University of Suwon, where he majored in film. Taking on multiple part-time jobs between study periods, it was surely challenging for him to be who he is now—one brilliant success story.

As a versatile and methodical artist, Ryu Jun-yeol’s work highlights the pleasure of seeing him on screen. It makes sense that his sustained accomplishments drove him into the Forbes Korea Power Celebrity list two years in a row—in 2018 and 2019.