Ins Choi

Insub "Ins" Choi is a Korean Canadian actor and playwright best known for his Dora Mavor Moore Award-nominated 2011 play Kim's Convenience and its subsequent TV adaptation. Choi was born in South Korea and raised in Toronto, Ontario. He is a graduate of the theatre program at York University. Early life and education Born Insub Choi in South Korea in 1974, Choi moved to Canada at the age of one and grew up in Scarborough, Ontario, which is now part of Toronto. His father was born in North Korea and "walked south" with his family as a child. Choi's mother grew up in South Korea, where she met and married her husband before emigrating to Canada with Choi and his two older sisters in 1975. His father worked as a pastor of an immigrant church in downtown Toronto that he owned and founded. An immigration officer misspelled his name as "Insurp" and in Grade 9 Choi began using the name "Danny", inspired by John Travolta's character in Grease. When he attended the acting program at York University, he met other struggling Asian immigrants and began going by Ins, as a shortened form of his birth name.