Crash Landing on You’s Hyun Bin’s big K-drama win – he takes APAN Star Awards’ grand prize for role in hit romantic drama
- On receiving the top prize, Hyun thanked his co-star Son Ye-jin, who is his life partner off set. The series Crash Landing on You won three prizes in total
- Itaewon Class won drama of the year award, while popularity awards went to Kim Soo-hyun and Seo Yea-ji, the leads of It’s Okay to Not Be Okay
Initially expected to take place in November 2020, the APAN (Asia-Pacific Actors’ Network) Star Awards ceremony was finally staged on January 23. This year’s grand prize winner was Hyun Bin, for his role as the North Korean army captain Jeong-hyeok in the hit Korean romantic drama Crash Landing on You .
Accepting his award on stage, Hyun expressed his gratitude to co-star Son Ye-jin, who is now also his real-life partner off set. The series picked up three prizes, with Kim Young-min co-winning for best supporting actor and Kim Sun-young earning the award for best supporting actress.
The drama of the year award went to the boundary-pushing youth series Itaewon Class , which also picked up the popularity award for best OST, which went to BTS singer V (aka Kim Tae-hyung) for his song Sweet Night.
The popularity awards, which had previously been announced, went to Kim Soo-hyun and Seo Yea-ji, the leads of It’s Okay to Not Be Okay , which won a total of four prizes, the most of the night. Seo also won the excellence award for actress in a miniseries, and Oh Jung-se was the other best supporting actor award winner.
The top excellence awards for miniseries performers went to actress Kim Hee-sun in Alice and actor Kang Ha-neul for his role in When the Camellia Blooms. Park Hae-joon of The World of the Married picked up the excellence award for Actor in a miniseries.
Over on the serial drama side, it was Once Again that cleaned up, winning the top excellence awards for actor (Lee Sang-yeob) and Actress (Lee Min-jung), and the excellence award for actor (Lee Sang-yi). The excellence award for actress went to Shim Yi-young of My Wonderful Life.
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Best new actress went to Hospital Playlist’s Jeon Mi-do while Lee Do-hyun of 18 Again and Tale of Nokdu’s Jang Dong-yoon shared the best new actor accolade.
Cha Young-hoon earned the best director award for When the Camellia Blooms, and best writer went to Hot Stove League scriptwriter Lee Shin-hwa.
Meanwhile, the best manager prize went to Kang Kun-taek of VAST Entertainment, Best Mistake earned the web drama award and the short-form drama award went to Live Like That.
The APAN Star Awards were first put on by the Korea Entertainment Management Association in 2012 to celebrate actors who contribute to the global spread of the Korean wave (Hallyu). This was their seventh edition.
