Lee Gyu-lee is a business writer at The Korea Times, focusing primarily on IT & telecommunications, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and KOTRA. Prior to this, she has covered a wide range of cultural news, from film, television and K-pop to lifestyle and fashion.
'This year has been miracle,' actress Lee Ha-nee says
Actress Lee Ha-nee has been having a blissful year with the success of the smash-hit film “Extreme Job,” followed by TV series “The Fiery Priest.” Courtesy of Acemaker Movie Works
By Lee Gyu-lee
By Lee Gyu-lee
Winning fame in one field is difficult and to achieve it in three different fields is rare. But Lee Ha-nee is one of these rare people, recognized for her achievements as a professional musician, beauty pageant winner, and prominent actress.
“This year has been more than a gift, it has been a miracle,” said the actress during an interview with The Korea Times, Thursday, at a cafe in Samcheong-dong, Seoul.
She has been having a blissful year making herself more known to audiences as an actress with the success of the smash-hit film “Extreme Job,” which became the second-highest ticket-selling film in Korean history. Shortly after the success of her film, the comedy TV series “The Fiery Priest” brought her another success, drawing a 22 percent viewership.
Lee was first brought into the spotlight as Miss Korea 2006, and third runner-up in the 2007 Miss Universe contest. The former beauty pageant winner began acting in 2008 with a musical “Polaroid.”
“The stage has been such a natural place for me since I was young,” said Lee who is also a professional player of the gayageum ― a Korean 12 stringed zither. She has been playing the gayageum since childhood and has given many performances.
“But when I got up on stage to act, I got so nervous. It just felt like a whole different place and getting that feeling shocked me so much,” she said. “Considering the amount of time I put into becoming a professional gayageum player, being on stage right off the bat felt like I was taking acting too lightly.”
So this was when she sought out formal training, leaving for an acting program in New York around 2008.
It has been over a decade since she started developing her career in acting, but she still strives to challenge herself with different roles rather than compromising with similar characters.
In contrast to her two previous roles in comedy, she took on the role of hardheaded international trade lawyer Kim Na-ri in the new
white-collar crime film, "Black Money.”
The film intends to shed light on government corruption in a financial scandal that hit Korea in the early 2000s.
A scene from crime film “Black Money,” starring actor Cho Jin-woong as prosecutor Yang Min-hyeok, left, and Lee as lawyer Kim Na-ri./ Courtesy of Acemaker Movie Works
“After working with such high tension in two comedy films, I was able to let it all out and was ready for a toned-down role,” she said. “When I take on a role, I don't want to repeat the same pattern and character that I've played before. I need to be self-aware to prevent myself from being unoriginal and I need to try different patterns and tone.”
Lee said she found the character attractive from the moment she read the script. “This character speaks with energy that cannot be expressed in just words,” she said referring to the charisma of her character.
To play the character of an international lawyer who studied in the U.S, she said she paid a substantial amount of attention to learning to speak English with a perfect accent in the film. “I had to be able to deliver the details of her background without having to lay them out in words. So I needed such fluency to show that she spent years in the states studying and working professionally.”
But taking on this role meant more than just expanding her acting repertoire. “I felt responsible for informing people about such a scandal,” she said, referring to the 2003 acquisition of Korea's fifth-largest bank Korean Exchange Bank at an extremely low price by the U.S.-based private equity firm Lone Star Funds.
As the firm exited Korea after selling the bank shares in November 2012, it filed a suit against the Korean government seeking over $4.7 billion for delaying the approval of selling. Mentioning the ongoing case, Lee said now is about time that people discuss the matter.
“If our government loses the case, which in most investor-state cases they do, the settlement is paid with our taxes,” she said. “So I feel this is the right time to bring it up to the surface and discuss it…people have the right to know.”
The film “Black Money,” directed by Chung Ji-young, will be released in local theaters on Nov. 13.