Presentation Schedule
God of Acting: Negotiating Scandal and Artistry in the Trajectory of Lee Byung-hun (108293)
Session Chair: Paul Newland
Monday, 11 May 2026 17:50
Session: Session 5
Room: Room G404 (4F)
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
A star is never one person. They are a composite of conflicting meanings held together by ideology. In the case of Lee Byung-hun, a veteran of Korean cinema and K-drama with a thirty-five-year career, he is a composite of different meanings and persona depending on the reading of his on- and off-screen images. To the Western audience, Lee is the enigmatic Front Man of Squid Game (2021-2025) or the desperate capitalist anti-hero of Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice (2025). He serves as a vessel of high-competence, blank-slate Asian masculinity. To the Korean domestic audience, he remains the "God of Acting" (yeongi eui shin) whose technical performance always meets with rave reviews. At the same time, these acting skills help recover his standing following the 2014 blackmail scandal which almost ruined the career he built. Using star studies methodology, this presentation explores Lee's post-scandal rehabilitative strategy. Challenging industrial expectations where scandal degrades the star image, Lee defies this by betting on his "God of Acting" persona. By choosing roles that foreground his acting chops, he attempts to divorce the art from the artist. I trace Lee's post-scandal trajectory from the critically acclaimed Inside Men (2015) to his recent Golden Globe-nominated role in No Other Choice. In the age of Hallyu dominance, the star as a structured polysemy no longer just manages societal contradictions but overwrites the star’s private reality to sustain global commodity value.
Authors:
Andrew Lee, University of Pittsburgh, United States
About the Presenter(s)
Mr Andrew Lee is a University Doctoral Student at University of Pittsburgh in United States
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