In Korea, even in 2008 most women are expected to quit work when they get married, and supposedly turn from attractive Agashis (아가씨) into unsexy, unfashionable Ajummas (아주마) as soon as they hit 30, so much so that many unmarried 30 year-old women will lie to everybody for years that they’re 29! Whether a cause or effect of these societal attitudes, the vast majority of actresses and especially singers in Korea are in their early-20s, much more so than in countries like the US and UK, and with teenage groups like the Wonder Girls and Girls’ Generation becoming very popular too, then their average age seems to be getting even lower. By comparison, many 30-something actresses have to start producing bikini photobooks to even get noticed by the Korean media at all (see here and here for examples).

There are of course some 30-something female celebrities that spring to mind, including 39 year-old Uhm Jung-hwa (엄정화), 37 year-old Lee Yeong-ae (이영애), 38 year-old Kim Hye-Su (김혜수), and of course today’s subject 36 year-old Go So-young (고소영, sometimes spelt Ko So-young or Go So-young). But while all are well-known and appear on TV regularly, one senses that the peaks of their careers are well and truly over. Fans of Uhm Jung-hwa especially may disagree with that, but unfortunately her refusal to act and dress like a stereotypical conservative ajumma (and good on her!) means that she isn’t very popular amongst Korean netizens these days. And one wonders, if clearly sexy Go so-young and Uhm Jung-Hwa don’t get Korean men interested in 30-something women, then what will? Maybe the fact that Lee Chae-yeon (이채연) turns 30 this year, and Korea’s biggest sex-symbol Lee Hyori (이효리) will turn 30 next year too? Actually, since Chinese New Year’s just past, she’s already 30 in Korean age, and this is getting a lot of attention in the Korean media.

Meanwhile, with a career spanning 15 years, Go So-young is still very well-known to Korean audiences, much more so than any of the other celebrities I’ve previously profiled for ZR5, and you don’t have to spend very long in Korea to see her in a commercial on TV or her image on a billboard. Personally, I first noticed her in this commercial for the clothing company Giordano in either 2004 or 2005, which also has Jun Ji-hyun (전지현) in it:

(The original much bigger picture is available here, and seven galleries of similar pictures are available here)

And like learning a new word in another language when you live in a foreign country, once I knew who she was then I started seeing her everywhere. I think I saw her in both of these lingerie commercials less than a week later:

Like most celebrities, Go So young first appeared in commercials well before she was offered any serious acting roles, and first appeared on TV in shampoo commercials in the early-1990s. You can watch some of them for yourself here, and it’s interesting seeing the Korean clothes and hair-styles from then, and what she looked like as a 21 year-old. This one is from the mid-1990s:

But what makes Go So-young different to most other Korean actors is that, despite the length of her career, she has only appeared in two dramas in total, the first in her debut role called Love Tomorrow (내일은 사랑) in 1993, and the second not until last year, which I’ll talk more about more below. With Love Tomorrow being so old - pre-internet and all - then I’m afraid I can’t find any more information about it, but I can tell you that she appeared in her first movie The Fox with Nine Tails (구미호) in 1994, and has appeared in at least 10 to 15 movies since. The Fox with Nine Tails wasn’t a commercial or critical success, but because it was the first Korean movie to ever use computer-graphics then it probably helped with her exposure, quite crucial for an aspiring 22 year-old actress. But what really kick-started her career was her appearance in the teenage-gangster movie Beat (비트) in 1997.

Like Ju Ji-hyun’s movie My Sassy Girl (엽기적인 그녀) a few years later, this is one of the movies that all high-school and University students at the time would have seen and so, in a way, came to define that generation. Here is a poster of the movie, and what appears to be a picture of Go So-young from it: 

Unfortunately, again because of it’s age, finding clips from it on the internet is difficult. This following clip from YouTube doesn’t show any scenes with her, but you do get some idea of how violent the movie is. Because of that violence, Korea’s arcane censorship laws mean that you need proof of age to watch most of the other clips that I could find, and Korea’s foreigner-unfriendly id number systems (see here and here) mean that, practically-speaking, only people born in Korea can watch them. I did find this clip with features her in a song from the soundtrack though, but as I type this (after the mandatory ad) the song appears to have problems loading! Hopefully it will work later. 

After Beat, Go So-young’s new-found popularity landed her roles in Love Wind Love Song (연풍연가) (screenshots available here), If The Sun Rises in the West (해가 서쪽에서 뜰다면),  and First Kiss (키스할까요) (screenshots available here) in 1998, Love (러브) in 1999, a cameo role in the internationally-famous Joint Security Area (공동경비구역) in 2000 (screenshots available here), and finally  A Day (하루) in 2001. A very serious movie, A Day covered the subjects of adoption and organ donation, taboo subjects to many Koreans, but Go So-young was excellent in her first serious role, and I remember reviews lavishly praised her acting skills. So it was not great surprise that she won the Korean Grand Bell Best Actress award later in the year. But then suddenly and inexplicably, at the height of her popularity and career, she took a break for 2 years, only appearing in commercials.

She may well have simply been tired, and certainly deserved the break, but unfortunately her career has been plagued by bad luck ever since, and she has been quite unable to make the comeback she seeks. In 2003 she appeared in Double Agent (이중간첩), again a very serious movie and well worth watching, but unfortunately it’s very sombre tone put off Korean audiences. She then took another long break, and hoped to make a comeback via the horror-thriller A.P.T.  (아파트) in 2006 (poster and trailer below), but the movie proved an commercial and critical dissappointment, despite high domestic and international expectations.

Understandably hurting from this, it is natural that Go So-young would react by wanting to drastically change her image, and so next she decided to play a comic role in Go Go Sister (언니가 간다), much like the 1986 American movie Peggy Sue Got Married with Kathleen Turner, but after nearly a decade of seeing elegant images of her in apartment, cosmetic and clothing ads then Korean audiences didn’t warm to this new, rather forced image of her, and the movie only lasted two weeks in cinemas. What made this flop especially galling for her was that she turned down the role of 200 Pounds Beauty (미녀는 괴로워) to take it up, and that movie went on to be one of the biggest successes of the year.

Unfortunately still not getting the message, last year she returned to the small screen with a role in the drama Blue Fish (푸른 물고기), but although she might have been suited to an innocent and naive role a decade ago, her elegant image and real-life worldliness and wealth ultimately meant that she was completely miscast, and that drama never achieved higher than 6% in the ratings (big name Korean stars make an average of US$500,000 for each commercial). On top of all that, earlier in the year her string of acting failures, but increasing wealth, fuelled many rumours on the internet, and ultimately she had to (successfully) sue some netizens for libel in May.

With this baggage, Go So-young has become a bit of an enigma by 2008. Still instantly recognisable all over Korea and one of the most popular actresses here ever, nevertheless she has had no critical or commercial successes in seven years, and has made no less than four failed comebacks in that time. But according to this Korean source, many other big-name stars are having similar problems these days, and she has demonstrated that she does have strong acting ability. Personally, I am confident that if she forgets constant makeovers, and instead exploits and refines the strong elegant image that she already has, then she will ultimately make the comeback she craves.

(P.S. Apologies for the long delay since my last post. Since I came back to Korea last month, I’ve moved apartments, taken up a new job, started looking after my daughter every morning, and now my wife is pregnant again too! But I promise to get back to regular posting again from now on.)