Edited by Hwang Hong Sun
Translated by Kim Hoyeun
Lee Min Ho started his acting career when he appeared in EBS youth drama Secret Campus. Since then, he worked on Mackerel Run and I am Your Teacher, and took his first lead role in MBC’s one-act play Get Up.
After building up his career with various works, Lee Min Ho saw the light of day with Boys Over Flowers. He came through a competition of 200 to 1 to get the role of Goo Joon Pyo, the leader of F4, leading the drama’s success and enjoying immense popularity. Since then, he has proved that Boys Over Flowers‘s success is no coincidence, making consecutive hits with Personal Taste and City Hunter. Moreover, thanks to the explosive overseas responses of these dramas, Lee Min Ho became one of the biggest Hallyu stars.
Lee Min Ho, who was continuing his relentless move, took a step further in 2013 through The Heirs, written by “master of romantic-comedy” Kim Eun Sook. The Heirs is set in a high school populated by the privileged and uber-rich teens, and in the drama, Lee Min Ho took on the role of Kim Tan, the future heir to a leading conglomerate who has the pain of being the son of the mistress. Though there were some negative reactions to the actor playing a similar role from Boys Over Flowers, Lee Min Ho jumped into the project with the determination to show improved and different performances.
As a result, The Heirs relieved the concerns of being the “copy” of Boys Over Flowers. Lee Min Ho’s delicate emotional acting and soft eyes started the “Kim Tan craze.” At the time, writer Kim Eun Sook said that she planned the project from the start with Lee Min Ho as a model, and Lee Min Ho proved her right by leading the drama to the global success with his flawless performances.
Recently, Lee Min Ho worked with Kim Eun Sook again in The King: Eternal Monarch as his comeback project, and is currently taking a break searching for his next work. Now, we are waiting for Lee Min Ho, who the entire Asia loves, and his next move.
Personally, I think he still has a long way to go to reach the level of the likes of say, Yoo Ah In, Kang Ha-neul, Kim Soo Yyun and others in his age group. He may be pretty, but that is not everything.