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Profile | Who is Chun Woo-hee, star of Netflix K-dramas The Atypical Family and The 8 Show and a long-time supporter of Korean independent films?

  • Chun Woo-hee, star of Netflix K-dramas The Atypical Family and The 8 Show, has been acting for two decades and has not shied away from taking risky roles
  • Career highlights include her performance as a student in film Han Gong-ju and her role in The Wailing – considered the greatest Korean horror film of all time

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Korean actress Chun Woo-hee, currently on screens in drama series The 8 Show and The Atypical Family, has steadily raised her profile in 20 years in the entertainment industry, having begun her career while still in high school. Photo: Netflix
Chun Woo-hee has been acting in South Korea for 20 years, but this month she appears as you have never seen her before in Netflix’s dystopian The 8 Show.

In a role that is bound to generate plenty of conversation, Chun plays “8th Floor”, a larger-than-life character who lives on the top floor of an eight-storey building as part of a unique game show – and she is at her most vivacious and surprising.

Chun is currently pulling double duty – she is also the co-lead in fantasy romantic drama The Atypical Family alongside Jang Ki-yong. In it, she plays a woman who begins to live with, and help, a family of super-powered individuals, all of whom have lost those powers.

Why we love her

Chun Woo-hee in a still from The Atypical Family. Photo: JTBC
Chun Woo-hee in a still from The Atypical Family. Photo: JTBC

Chun began acting while still in high school, taking a small role in the 2004 theatrical romantic comedy Love So Divine, which was released when she was just 17.

The actress worked for several years before getting noticed, and has not shied away from taking risky roles.

She has split her time between independent and commercial productions and, before her big breakthrough a decade ago, had several roles that helped to raise her profile in the entertainment industry.

Chun Woo-hee in a still from Sunny (2011).
Chun Woo-hee in a still from Sunny (2011).
Among them was her role in Bong Joon-ho’s Mother in 2009 as the neighbourhood girl that Won Bin’s character has a crush on, and a turn as the scene-stealing antagonist in Kang Hyoung-cheol’s 2011 nostalgia-driven hit Sunny.

The star-making roles

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