Kim Ju-hun
BIOGRAPHY
Kim Ju-hun (Korean: 김주헌; born 1 March 1980 in Pohang, North Gyeongsang) is a South Korean actor with thirty-eight productions to his name. His name is also romanized Kim Joo-hun. He holds a bachelor’s degree in theatre and film from the Seoul Institute of the Arts.
He began on the stage rather than the screen. His debut was in the play Gangster Number 1 in 2007, and from 2009 to 2014 he was a member of the Alleyway Theater Company. His first screen credit, the KBS Drama Special anthology in May 2010, came during his time with the company.
Film work followed through the mid 2010s, including the baseball team manager in Train to Busan (2016). He has also appeared in Tazza: The Hidden Card (2014), The Accidental Detective (2015), The Princess and the Matchmaker (2018), A Man of Reason (2023) and Mission: Cross (2024).
On television he has played Park Min-guk in Dr. Romantic, Lee Dae-chan in Encounter (2018), Lee Sang-in in It’s Okay to Not Be Okay (2020), Cha Eun-seok in Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol (2020), Seok Do-hoon in Now, We Are Breaking Up (2021), Bae In-cheol in Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022), Choi Doha across sixteen episodes of Big Mouth (2022), Lee Seo-joon in Castaway Diva (2023), Choi Sang-rok across twenty episodes of Missing Crown Prince (2024) and Park Dong-ah in When the Stars Gossip (2025).
Two years stand out. In 2020 he appeared in three series, Start-Up, It’s Okay to Not Be Okay and Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol, and in 2022 he again had three, Juvenile Justice, Extraordinary Attorney Woo and Big Mouth.
His studies began in sculpture at the College of Fine Arts of Andong National University before he moved to theatre and film at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. On stage he played Yi Sang in Raising the Sun in the Sky in 2013, a performance that won Best Actor at the 11th Two-hander Theater Festival. In 2017 he took on Molina in Kiss of the Spider Woman and Renee Gallimard in M. Butterfly. He played Harry in The Understudy in 2021 and 2022, and Nick Bright in The Invisible Hand in 2022.
On screen his first breakthrough was Ahn Jae-geun, the whistleblower in Argon (2017). Encounter (2018), in which he played a restaurant owner, marked a turning point. Further credits include Designated Survivor: 60 Days (2019), Dr. Brain (2021), Soundtrack #1 (2022), The Tyrant (2024) and the films A Violent Prosecutor (2016), Memoir of a Murderer (2017), Fairy (2022) and When I Sleep (2023). Two of his awards came from SBS: Best Supporting Actor in 2020 for Dr. Romantic 2 and an Excellence Award in a miniseries in 2021 for Now, We Are Breaking Up.
In advertising he became well known from 2016, working repeatedly with the director Shin Woo-seok. The Canon PowerShot G7 X campaign of that year travelled widely online, and he also appeared in the Samsung 8K short film Untact in 2020.
His latest role is Do Hyeon-su, the professor who mentors the young musicians, across twelve episodes of Four Hands, Two Sonatas, which began on 29 August 2026.
Kim Ju-hun’s first credit is from May 2010, and his roles now reach from Train to Busan in 2016 to When the Stars Gossip in 2025.
Big Mouth gave him sixteen episodes as Choi Doha, and Missing Crown Prince gave him twenty as Choi Sang-rok.
Set by episode count, the roles form a ladder. Dr. Romantic as Park Min-guk ran thirty-two episodes, Missing Crown Prince twenty, Big Mouth sixteen and Four Hands, Two Sonatas twelve, so the long television commitments and the tighter miniseries formats both sit in his list. The film work sits earlier: Tazza: The Hidden Card in 2014, The Accidental Detective in 2015 and Train to Busan in 2016 fall in three consecutive years, at the same time his Alleyway Theater Company membership ended in 2014. Two of his television characters, Choi Doha in 2022 and Choi Sang-rok in 2024, share the surname Choi.
In my view the clearest pattern in his career is the balance he keeps between stage and screen. Kim Ju-hun has said that if he leans too far toward either medium, he feels his existence as an actor becomes precarious, and he aims to return to the stage every year. What stayed with me is how many of his television parts are men who hold a story together from the side rather than the centre. If you want to see that at its most compact, I would watch him in Encounter and then compare it with the mentor he plays in the 2026 tvN series.
PROFILE DETAILS
- Native Name
- 김주헌
- Real Name
- Kim Ju-hun
- Pronouns
- he/him
- Born
- (Age 46)
- Birthplace
- Pohang, North Gyeongsang, South Korea
- Gender
- Male
- Western Zodiac
- Pisces ♓
- Chinese Zodiac
- Monkey 🐒
- Profession
- Nationality
- Years Active
- 2010-present
- Languages
- Korean
Discussion 0 comments
Join other fans talking about Kim Ju-hun. Be kind, no spoilers without tags, no spam.
No comments yet.
Share the first reaction below.