Korean actress Kang Soo-youn was laid to rest on May 11 after she passed away on May 7 due to intracerebral hemorrhage. She was 55.
Stars and directors attended her funeral held at the Samsung Medical Center Funeral Hall in Gangnam, Seoul.
Last May 5, Kang Soo-youn was rushed to the hospital after suffering cardiac arrest at her home. She was found by her family at 5:40 p.m. in Apgujeong, Gangnam in Seoul in a state of cardiac arrest. She passed away at Gangnam Severance Hospital in Seoul at 3 p.m. on May 7.
Among those who attended the funeral were actress Moon So-ri, Jung Woo-sung, Sol Kyung-gu and Ryu Kyung-soo.
She was cremated at the Seoul Memorial Park and the burial site was at the Yongin Memorial Park.
Kang Soo-youn was preparing to make her comeback after nine years through the Netflix sci-fi movie “Jung_E,” which is scheduled to be released this year. Her last movie was “Jury” released in 2013.
She was the first Korean actor to win at the Venice International Film Festival. For her role in the movie “The Surrogate Woman,” she won best actress at the 44th Venice International Film Festival in 1987.
In addition, she won best actress at the 1989 Moscow International Film Festival for “Come, Come, Come Upward.”
Kang Soo-youn won several times as best actress at the Baeksang Arts Awards, Grand Bell Awards, Blue Dragon Film Awards and Chunsa Film Art Awards.
In 2001, she bagged the "daesang" (grand prize) at the SBS Drama Awards for "Ladies of the Palace." She also served as festival director at Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) from 2015 to 2017.
According to the Actor Is Present website, “Born in 1966, Kang Sooyoun began acting as a child actor exclusively for Tongyang Broadcasting Company in 1969 when she was only three years old. Growing up from a child to a high-teen star through TV dramas and movies, Kang turned into an adult actor in 1985 when she graduated from high school. Despite some pains, The Surrogate Womb (1987) she starred in was a great challenge and achievement. In the historical drama set in the Joseon Dynasty, Kang Sooyoun played a surrogate woman for a noble family, pulling off the character with great concentration. It allowed her to become the first East Asian actress to win the award at the Venice Film Festival.”
“Later, Kang Sooyoun’s era unfolded in Chungmuro, where she solidified her image as a youth star with Springtime of Mimi and Cheol-Su (1987). In Come, Come, Come Upward (1989), she played the role of a Buddhist nun, winning the Best Actress at the Moscow International Film Festival and reconfirming her position as a world star. In 1991, she starred in Autumn Tempest (1991), a Taiwanese film, which was a very unusual case for a Korean female actor to advance abroad at that time.
“Above all, Kang Sooyoun was the only actress who had acting talents and box office success at the same time. From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, she was one of the actors we could see most and had the most trophies at awards ceremonies. Especially during this period, Kang Sooyoun was a reliable female actor to lean on for young directors who tried new movies.
“These are such films: Director Park Kwangsoo’s Berlin Report (1991), Director Jang Sunwoo’s The Road to Race Track (1991), Director Lee Hyunseung’s Blue In You (1992), Director Oh Byungchul’s Go Alone Like Musso’s Horn (1997), and Director Lim Sangsoo’s Girls’ Night Out (1998). In particular, Kang Sooyoun was the most important female actor in feminist films that began to sprout in the 1990s. Her characters were faithful to their desires, proudly resisting patriarchal order and agonizing over the identity of women.
“Since 2000, she has been loved by the public through TV rather than movies, and she played the role of Jeong Nanjung in the royal historical drama Ladies in Palace (2001), pulling off a perfect villain character. Later, she appeared in the TV drama Moonhee (2007) and the film Hanji (2011). She worked as a co-chairman of the Busan International Film Festival in 2015. Now, after her 10-year-break, Kang Sooyoun is returning to the cinema with Director Yeon Sangho’s Netflix film Jung Yi (working title).”