
In 2006, Bae became one of Korea's wealthiest celebrities as the majority shareholder (34.6%) of management agency KeyEast (his stocks are valued at US$128 million as of May 2015). As the most famous Korean actor in Japan, he became a proponent for Korean cuisine, and his Gosire lunchboxes (or bento) are sold in Japanese convenience stores and supermarkets. He owns health food restaurant Gorilla in the Kitchen and high-end traditional Korean restaurant Gosire. īae then entered the restaurant business, by establishing restaurants and cafes that capitalize on the well-being trend. The film had a weak domestic run but due to Bae's star power, it set a new box office record for a Korean film in Japan with ¥2.72 billion. He next published a photo book The Image: Volume 1 in 2004, which sold 10,000 copies.Īfterwards he worked with director Hur Jin-ho in April Snow (2005), about a stage lighting director who discovers his wife's infidelity when she becomes comatose after a near-fatal car accident with her lover. His performance received Best New Actor accolades from the Blue Dragon Film Awards and the Baeksang Arts Awards. In contrast to his gentle, intellectual image, Bae played a conniving, sexually predatory nobleman in E J-yong's adaptation of Les Liaisons dangereuses set in 18th century Joseon. In 2003, Bae was cast in his first major big-screen role in Untold Scandal (he had previously appeared in bit parts in two films in the 1990s). "Emperor Yon") and brought in US$2.3 billion in tourism and Winter Sonata merchandise sales. Bae gained a tremendous fan base among Japanese middle-aged women, who dubbed him with the honorific nickname Yon-sama ( ヨン様 cf. A melodrama about first love, lost memory and unknown family ties, Winter Sonata became an unprecedented success in Asia and more than 20 countries, particularly in Japan. īut it was Yoon Seok-ho's Winter Sonata in 2002 that would transform Bae's career, and consequently the face of Korean dramas abroad. In Hotelier (2001), he played a mergers and acquisitions specialist about to takeover a hotel, but has a change of heart after falling in love with one of its employees (Bae would later reprise his role in a cameo in the 2007 Japanese remake of Hotelier).

Throughout the 1990s, Bae continued playing leading roles on television, in Papa (1996), First Love (1996) which reached a peak viewership rating of 65.8%, The Barefooted Youth (1998), and the Noh Hee-kyung-penned Did We Really Love? (1999). The rookie actor quickly gained popularity, and a year later he won Best New Actor at the 1995 KBS Drama Awards for Our Sunny Days of Youth. Career īae made his acting debut in 1994 in the Korean drama Salut D'Amour (lit. He entered Sungkyunkwan University in 2000 as a Film Studies major.

At that moment, he looked so cool and so handsome.Bae Yong-joon was born in Mapo District, Seoul. But PSY paid me 10 million won just for that one dance move. “I was grateful just for the fact that he was using at all, but then he said, ‘Since I’m using your choreography, I’ll pay you a copyright fee for it.’ I would have been thankful even if he hadn’t paid me anything, but since he said he would, I replied, ‘Oh, thank you so much!’”īae Yoon Jung continued, “Back then, I was getting paid 3 million to 4 million won to choreograph an entire three- to four-minute song. For me, it was like, ‘Wow, he wants to use my choreography? Of course. “PSY asked me if he could use just that part of the choreography,” she went on, “and from my perspective, I was just grateful.

He said that no matter much he tried out other choreographies, he kept thinking that the ‘arrogant dance’ was the perfect fit. “Brown Eyed Girls’ ‘arrogant dance’ had been a huge hit, and PSY said one day that while he was working on ‘Gentleman,’ he couldn’t think of any other dance move for the choreography. “I was so grateful to him,” recalled Bae Yoon Jung.
