Korean actors line up to praise Youn Yuh-jung on her Oscar win

Youn won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her role as the matriarch in Isaac Chung’s story of a Korean family that migrates to Arkansas

She is the first Korean actor nominated for an Oscar for acting, as well as the first to win

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Yuh-Jung Youn accepts the Oscar for best actress in a supporting role. Photo: Reuters

Published: 2:40pm, 26 Apr 2021Updated: 2:57pm, 26 Apr 2021

Youn Yuh-jung made history on Sunday as she became the first Korean performer to walk away from the Academy Awards with an acting prize, after picking up the best supporting actress award. She was nominated for the American indie Minari, about a family of Korean immigrants in Arkansas in the 1980s.

As the first Korean actor to even be nominated for an acting award at the Oscars, Youn’s win is garnering massive media attention in South Korea, where it is dominating the headlines.

The media hubbub surrounding her awards campaign these past few months recalled the similar excitement surrounding director Bong Joon-ho and his film Parasite, which triumphed at the Academy Awards last year with four historic awards, including best picture and best director.

Congratulations quickly poured in from Youn’s acting peers. Lee Byung-hun, one of the few Korean stars to have broken into Hollywood, shared a picture of Youn and her Oscar statuette to his Instagram, captioning it “impossible is not a fact, it’s just an opinion”. Lee and Youn worked together on the family comedy-drama Keys to the Heart.

Youn Yuh-jung with Frances McDormand, winner of the award for best actress in a leading role for ‘Nomadland’. Photo: Chris Pizzello via Reuters

Jeon Do-yeon, Youn’s co-star in The Housemaid and Beasts Clawing at Straws, said in her congratulation that it was “the award news we could all believe in”.

Parasite star Choi Woo-shik, who appeared with her in the reality TV programme Youn’s Stay, also offered his congratulations, mentioning that “as we watched the broadcast it was the thing everyone wanted the most and I cried as I watched”.