With appearances in only roughly ten dramas and four movies to her credit, 27 year-old Kim Sa-rang is not nearly as well-known as the other Korean stars I’ve written about for ZR5, and a quick survey of my Korean friends reveals that they know little more than the face and the name. But as I’m sure ZR5 readers will agree, once you’ve seen her it’s difficult to forget her , and while she hasn’t had a very notable acting career so far, it’s quite respectable for a former model.

Almost completely unknown previously, Kim Sa-rang became an overnight celebrity by winning the Miss Korea competition in May 2000 (about 50 videos of the swimsuit section of the competition available here), and this gave her the chance to represent Korea at the Miss Universe competition in Puerto Rico the following year, where she won an award for the best national costume. Invitations for TV appearances and acting opportunities soon followed, and since then she’s had two parallel but quite separate drama and movie careers.

In the former, she’s slowly but surely been taking more lead roles in serious dramas, but her movie appearances have all been in lightweight, slapstick comedies. Unfortunately, its probably for those that she’s best-known overseas, especially for the 2006 movie Hot For Teacher (누가 그녀와 잤을까?), also known as Sexy Teacher, but once you’ve seen some screenshots and videos from it it’s not difficult to see why! Here’s a teaser preview:

Drama-wise, Kim Sa-rang made her acting debut with small supporting roles in the dramas Anger of Angel (천사의 분노) in 2000 and then How Should I Be? (어쩌면 좋아) in 2001, but landed her first lead role in Mina the following year. Since then, she has starred in Affection (정) in 2002, had lead roles in both Thousand Years of Love (천년 지애) and A Maiden’s Dream (천년의 꿈) in 2003, won the Best Supporting Actress Award at the 2005 KBS Performance Awards for her role in A Love to Kill (이죽일 놈의 사랑), even more notable considering the drama itself also won the Best Drama Series at the Asian Television Awards in 2006.

This year she has appeared in How to Meet a Perfect Neighbor (완벽한 이웃을 만나는 법) and finally the historical drama The King and I (왕과 나) currently showing on Korean TV. While it has a very large cast and her role is very minor, given her earlier dramas, her award and finally this picture from the King and I below, it does appear that on TV at least, she’s no longer chosen to appear in dramas just for her good looks.

But movie-wise, things couldn’t be more different. Her first movie role was as a very minor character in the comedy Birth of a Man (남자 태어나다) in 2002, which as you can probably tell from the poster below was quite slapstick and lightweight. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as Korean comedy tends to be much more slapstick than its American or British counterparts (which doesn’t mean it’s worse, just different), but this comedy appears to have been too low-brow even for Korean tastes, so forgettable that it took a considerable amount of surfing on Korean sites to find some information about it, and even longer to find screenshots of her to confirm that her appearance wasn’t just a typo (click here for the proof)!

Since those inauspicious beginnings, whether through deliberate choice, a lack of interest, a lack of offers or otherwise, her three other movies have also been quite lightweight and forgettable, although it’s true that she not only played a lead role in Love of South and North (남녀 북녀, poster below) in 2003, but also starred alongside the very popular male actor Jo In-seong (screenshots available here). At the end of January next year, her latest movie Radio Days (라듸오 데이즈) will be released in Korea, and I’ll watch then and make sure to update this post after I do, but so far Korean sources like this (there’s no English ones yet) indicate that it will just be a typical Korean romantic comedy, albeit one set in the 1930s (see here for a poster).

But of course, back in 2006 she was the star of the movie Hot For Teacher (or Sexy Teacher), which I know ZR5 readers have been patiently wating for more information on since I mentioned it at the beginning of the post! The English title(s) for the movie aren’t very good, “Who do you think slept with her?” being more accurate but not exactly rolling off the tongue, but then you don’t need to think much to get the gist of this movie - just take a look at the poster and screenshots below. And like the excellent review I linked to earlier pointed out (see here if you missed it) therein lies much of its appeal: this is a very low-brow movie, but except for a speech by Kim Sa-rang at the end, never tries to pretend it’s anything but 100 minutes of tasteless sex comedy, which even Sex Is Zero couldn’t bring itself to do.

That reviewer found many of the jokes mildly amusing, but personally I didn’t laugh at all, instead finding the movie little more than a tribute to the attractiveness of Kim Sa-rang. But after watching the short clip from the movie below, and seeing more screenshots below, I’d be surprised if ZR5 readers didn’t agree with me that the movie is worth watching just for that alone!

Now you see why I’ll take the time to go and see Radio Days next year after criticising the movies she’s been in so much! For any new fans, there are plenty more pictures of her available here and especially here, and there are seven years of posts, most with pictures, available at this Korean fan site too.

On that note, I hope all readers have a nice Christmas and New Year’s, and I’ll be back in about two weeks with my next post (#5) on Go So-yeong/고소영.