Kang Soo-youn

Kang Soo-yeon (; August 18, 1966 – May 7, 2022) was a South Korean actress. An internationally acclaimed star from the mid-1980s to the end of the 1990s, she is often honorifically nicknamed Korea's "first world star". Kang began her acting career as a child and gained national recognition with A High School Student's Diary on KBS 1TV (1983–1984), and the comedy films Whale Hunting 2 (1985) and Mimi and Cheolsu's Youth Sketch (1987). However, she would remain unknown outside her country until her breakout role in Im Kwon-taek's The Surrogate Woman (1987). She won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 44th Venice International Film Festival for this role, making her the first Korean actor to receive an award at a major international film festival. In 1989, she received the Bronze St. George at the 16th Moscow International Film Festival for Come Come Come Upward (1989), which further established her "world star" title. From the early 2000s and onwards however, her output slowed significantly. Kang took years off between film appearances and switched to acting on the small screen, where she achieved moderate success for starring in Ladies of the Palace (2001–02) on SBS TV. Her last film that was released during her lifetime was Juri (2013). After a nine-year gap, she was set to return to film with the Netflix original Jung_E, directed by Yeon Sang-ho. The production, which finished filming in January 2022, was released after Kang died, in January 2023. After collapsing from cerebral hemorrhage at her home in southern Seoul on May 5, 2022, Kang was transported to hospital and stayed in the ICU for recovery. She never awoke from the coma and died on May 7, 2022.