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Nonconformist Youn Yuh-jung: Meet South Korea's first Oscar-winning actress

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Claire Lee, Agence France-Presse

<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2021/reuters/04/26/20210426-youn-yuh-jung-rtr.jpg?ext=.jpg"/><figcaption>Youn Yuh-Jung accepts the Oscar for Actress in a Supporting Role during the live ABC Telecast of The 93rd Oscars in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 25, 2021. <em>ABC/A.M.P.A.S./Handout via Reuters</em></figcaption></figure></div><p>Septuagenarian Youn Yuh-jung, South Korea&#x27;s first Oscar-winning actress, has spent decades portraying nonconformist characters, from a vicious heiress to an ageing prostitute, challenging social norms in both career and life.</p><p>Her best supporting actress turn in &quot;Minari,&quot; a family drama about Korean immigrants in the US, is relatively more conventional: she portrays a playful grandmother to a mischievous young boy trying to adapt to life in rural Arkansas.</p><p>The film, written and directed by Korean-American Lee Issac Chung, earned six nominations overall including for best picture, best actor and a nod for Chung.</p><p>Youn&#x27;s win is the second Oscars success for a Korean-language film in as many years, after &quot;Parasite&quot; became the first non-English language best picture winner in 2020. </p><p>Youn, whose two grown sons are Asian-Americans, had played down excitement over her chance to make history, telling reporters last month: &quot;This is not a playoff game of actors, placing them in order.&quot;</p><p>And in her acceptance speech on Sunday, she honored her fellow nominees, exclaiming: &quot;How can I win over Glenn Close?&quot;</p><p>She had already collected a best supporting actress Screen Actors Guild award -- the first South Korean actress to do so -- and a Bafta for her performance, along with a string of prizes on the festival circuit.</p><p>Based on Chung&#x27;s own experiences growing up in America in the 1980s, &quot;Minari&quot; follows a Korean-born father who moves his family to a mainly white town in rural Arkansas in pursuit of a better life.</p><p>It is the latest of several grandmotherly castings for Youn, and &quot;Parasite&quot; director Bong Joon-ho said the role was &quot;the loveliest character Youn has ever played&quot;.</p><p>The award honours not just &quot;her performance in &#x27;Minari&#x27;, but the culmination of an illustrious career working with many of the prominent directors in Korea&quot;, said Brian Hu, a film professor at San Diego State University.</p><p>&quot;The win should be above all a testament to a career honing her craft.&quot;</p><div><strong>&#x27;Scarlet letter&#x27; </strong></div><p>Over more than 50 years, Youn has often played provocative and atypical characters who do not conform to the rules of socially conservative Korean society.</p><p>Born in 1947 in Kaesong -- now in North Korea -- she made her film debut in groundbreaking director Kim Ki-young&#x27;s &quot;Woman of Fire&quot; (1971), as the live-in maid to a middle-class household who becomes impregnated by the father of the family.</p><p>The thriller was a critical and commercial hit -- it remains a classic of the South&#x27;s modern cinema -- and Youn paid tribute to the late Kim in her speech on Sunday, saying: &quot;I think he would be very happy if he was still alive.&quot;</p><p>Despite the success of &quot;Woman of Fire,&quot; Youn&#x27;s first heyday came to an abrupt end in 1975, when she married singer Jo Young-nam and the couple moved to the United States.</p><p>Youn returned to South Korea in 1984, divorced Jo three years later, and struggled to resume her acting career to support her two children, at a time when divorce carried heavy stigma for Korean women.</p><p>&quot;To be divorced was like having the scarlet letter at the time,&quot; Youn told a local magazine in 2009.</p><p>&quot;There was this thing that dictated women shouldn&#x27;t make TV appearances so soon after their divorce.&quot; </p><p>She countered by accepting every role she was offered, however small. </p><p>&quot;I worked very hard. I had this mission of somehow feeding my children. I&#x27;d say yes even when I was asked to climb 100 stairs,&quot; she said.</p><div><strong>- &#x27;Fiercely competitive waters&#x27; -</strong></div><p>By the 1990s, Youn was a regular in television dramas, often portraying mothers, and later grandmothers. </p><p>In 2003, Youn made her film comeback in director Im Sang-soo&#x27;s &quot;A Good Lawyer&#x27;s Wife&quot;, as an unconventional mother-in-law in a dysfunctional family.</p><p>She played a cruel and rich heiress betrayed by her husband in Im&#x27;s 2012 thriller &quot;Taste of Money&quot;, and an ageing haenyeo -- the women of Jeju island who free-dive to collect shellfish -- reunited with her long-lost granddaughter in 2016 drama &quot;Canola&quot;.</p><p>Also in 2016, she was praised for her role in E J-yong&#x27;s drama &quot;The Bacchus Lady&quot; as an elderly prostitute -- a veteran of the brothels set up for US soldiers in South Korea -- who becomes involved in the deaths of former clients.</p><p>Throughout her career, Youn had to navigate the &quot;fiercely competitive waters&quot; of a film industry &quot;largely focused on young and often male talent&quot; for leading roles, explained Jason Bechervaise, a professor at Korea Soongsil Cyber University in Seoul. </p><p>Her Oscar win comes at a fraught time for Asian communities in the United States.</p><p>Anti-Asian violence has surged in America this year and four of the eight victims of last month&#x27;s Atlanta spa shootings were women of Korean descent, three of them in their 60s or 70s. </p><p>Film professor Hu told AFP that Youn&#x27;s award was also a &quot;validation for so many grandmothers in Korean-American households, especially at a time when Asian-American elders are seen as victims rather than victors&quot;.</p><div><strong>© Agence France-Presse</strong></div><div><strong>FROM THE ARCHIVES:</strong></div><figure class="op-interactive"><iframe height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UN7jqVGmLko?enablejsapi=1" width="560"></iframe></figure><div class="iwantbar">Watch more in <a href="//www.iwantv.com.ph/">iWantv</a> or <a href="//tfc.tv/">TFC.tv</a></div>

<p>Septuagenarian Youn Yuh-jung, South Korea's first Oscar-winning actress, has spent decades portraying nonconformist characters, from a vicious heiress to an ageing prostitute, challenging social norms in both career and life.</p>

Septuagenarian Youn Yuh-jung, South Korea's first Oscar-winning actress, has spent decades portraying nonconformist characters, from a vicious heiress to an ageing prostitute, challenging social norms in both career and life.

Nonconformist Youn Yuh-jung: Meet South Korea's first Oscar-winning actress

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Nonconformist Youn Yuh-jung: Meet South Korea's first Oscar-winning actress

Claire Lee,

Agence France-Presse

Published Apr 26, 2021 03:31 PM PHT

Read More:

Youn Yuh-jung

South Korea

Oscars

South Korea actress

Kdrama star

Minari

Best Supporting Actress

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