Lee Jung-eun has been acting for more than thirty years, spending much of that time in theatre and taking on smaller screen roles before finally receiving the wider recognition her performances had long deserved. Since her stage debut in 1991, she has built an impressive career in Korean film and television; her performance in Parasite earned her the Blue Dragon Film Award for Best Supporting Actress, among several other honours, and introduced her to the West on an entirely different scale. However, before the Oscar-winning Parasite, Lee Jung-eun had already appeared in several great films, including The Wailing, Okja, A Taxi Driver and The Woman in the White Car, to name just a few.
But LeeJung-eun’s career deserves to be recognised for far more than Parasite. Her performances in When the Camellia Blooms, The Light in Your Eyes, Our Blues, Hommage, Daily Dose of Sunshine and now in Doctor X: Mafia in White show just how versatile she is, whether playing a woman struggling with personal difficulties, dealing with complicated family relationships or finding humour in otherwise painful circumstances. I have always admired the honesty she brings to her acting, especially the way she portrays people who can be stubborn, frustrating, affectionate and vulnerable, sometimes all at once.
The actress is now returning to London for the 21st London Korean Film Festival, running from 2 to 16 November 2026, with two films that will show very different examples of her talent. Kim Mi-jo’s The Journey to Gyeong-ju, which receives its UK premiere as the festival’s Opening Gala at BFI Southbank on 2 November, sees Lee take the leading role of Ok-sil, a mother who has spent eight years grieving the murder of her youngest daughter. Alongside her three surviving daughters, played by Gong Hyo-jin, Park So-dam and Lee Yeon, she sets out to take revenge on the man responsible for her youngest daughter’s death, although the trip also brings to light how differently each woman has dealt with the tragedy over the past eight years.
Just two days later, on 4 November, Lee Jung-eun will also appear at Ciné Lumière for a special screening of Pil Gam-seong’s My Daughter Is a Zombie, in which she plays Bam-soon, a spirited grandmother whose family finds itself in the extraordinary position of trying to protect a young girl infected by a zombie virus. Adapted from Lee Yoon-chang’s popular webtoon, the film gives the actress a chance to exercise her considerable comic talents, while The Journey to Gyeong-ju asks her to portray a woman whose grief has become inseparable from her everyday existence.
Just before the London Korean Film Festival opens its doors, I had the pleasure of speaking with Lee Jung-eun about her portrayal of Ok-sil in The Journey to Gyeong-ju, the challenges of playing a mother who has lived with grief for so many years and how her love for her daughters can sometimes manifest itself through anger and frustration. We also discussed how she approached the film’s unusual mixture of humour and tragedy, the difference between revenge and justice, and whether seeing someone punished can ever truly ease the pain of losing a loved one.
View of the Arts: Ok-sil is a mother who has lived with an unbearable loss for years. How did you approach portraying someone whose grief has had so much time to settle into her, rather than someone who is experiencing it for the first time?
Lee Jung-eun: I paid attention to making her grief feel like a natural part of her daily existence, something as familiar as eating a meal or breathing, rather than expressing it through dramatic emotional outbursts. I think a loss carried for so many years is rather like a callus that has formed over a wound; it doesn’t mean the pain has disappeared, but that you’ve learned how to live with it.
VOA: What interested you most about the way Ok-sil expresses her pain? Is she someone who allows herself to be vulnerable, or does she tend to turn her emotions into something more practical, or even confrontational?
Lee Jung-eun: What interested me was her determination to act and confront things head-on. She doesn’t try to hide her vulnerability, but neither does she simply sit with her sadness and allow it to overwhelm her. Even when it means arguing or clashing with her family, she would rather express her feelings openly than keep everything bottled up. I found that very practical, almost stubborn kind of strength appealing.
VOA: The film combines dark humour with some very painful subject matter. How did you find the right balance in your performance without making Ok-sil’s grief feel any less real?
Lee Jung-eun: I tried to make sure that, however ridiculous a situation might become, the sincerity and weight of Ok-sil’s emotions were never lost. Rather than deliberately trying to be funny, I wanted the humour to come out naturally from the irony of someone behaving with complete seriousness in the middle of a tragic situation. I hoped those moments would reveal something recognisable about life, even in the most difficult circumstances.
VOA: Ok-sil’s relationship with her three surviving daughters is complicated by the loss they all share. Did you approach her differently in scenes with each daughter, and how much of her behaviour comes from wanting to protect them, even when she struggles to understand them?
Lee Jung-eun: Ok-sil carries a different kind of guilt and sense of responsibility towards each of her daughters, so I tried to reflect those differences through the way she looked at them and the tone she used when speaking to them. Even when her daughters behave in ways she finds difficult to understand, I believe that, beneath everything, her strongest instinct is still to protect her children. That maternal instinct is what drives her more than anything else.
VOA: Revenge is often presented in cinema as a clear path towards justice, but “The Journey to Gyeong-ju” seems more interested in the emotional consequences of that desire. Did playing Ok-sil change the way you think about the difference between seeking justice and seeking revenge?
Lee Jung-eun: I don’t believe personal revenge can be justified, but when I tried to understand things from Ok-sil’s perspective, I began to see an important difference between the two. Revenge felt like a destructive act driven by personal anger and a sense of having been terribly wronged, whereas justice seemed closer to a desperate cry for her loss to be properly acknowledged and for the chance to begin healing.
While filming, I thought a great deal about how this painful journey towards revenge should ultimately lead somewhere other than destruction. What matters most is the possibility of emotional recovery for the family left behind.
VOA: You have played a wide range of characters throughout your career, often finding very human details in people who might otherwise be difficult to understand. And I personally love every role you played. What did Ok-sil demand from you as an actor that you found especially challenging?
Lee Jung-eun: The greatest challenge was moving away from the familiar image of the devoted mother or the typical protagonist of a revenge story and instead portraying someone whose human flaws and fierce maternal love could exist together in a believable way.
The hardest part for me was finding the right balance between Ok-sil’s deep sadness and the film’s black comedy, because I needed to know when to keep her emotions under control and when to allow them to show, without making light of what she had been through or losing the humour in certain situations. It was something I had to think about carefully throughout filming.
Written and interviewed by Maggie Gogler
Featured image courtesy of ANIC Entertainment
View of the Arts is an online publication dedicated to film, music, and the arts, with a strong focus on the Asian entertainment industry. As we continue to grow, we aim to deepen our coverage of Asian music while remaining committed to exploring and celebrating creativity across the global arts landscape.
