Namkoong Min

Namkoong Min is the kind of actor who makes you forget you're watching a performance — he just disappears into a role completely. I first really noticed him in Good Manager, where he played this hilariously ruthless corporate fixer with a deadpan swagger that was impossible to look away from, and then Hot Stove League had me genuinely tearing up over baseball bureaucracy, which honestly should be illegal. The range is absurd: neo-noir street tough in A Dirty Carnival, romantic lead in Beautiful Gong Shim, period epic in My Dearest. He graduated Chung-Ang University and spent years grinding in smaller parts before the recognition caught up to the talent, which I think makes his performances feel earned rather than effortless. South Korea's drama scene has no shortage of skilled actors, but Min has this specific intensity — controlled, a little unpredictable — that puts him in a tier of his own.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Namkoong Min

Name (Japanese)

ナムグン・ミン

Reading

なむぐん・みん

Born

March 12, 1978 (age 48)

Origin

Seoul, South Korea

Occupation

actor / film actor / model / television actor

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Pisces / Horse

University

Chung-Ang University

• Official sitehttp://www.935ent.com/artist/?ArtistNo=2
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/min_namkoong/
• Xhttps://x.com/minnamkoong
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namkoong%20Min
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%8A%E3%83%A0%E3%82%B0%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%83%9F%E3%83%B3
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q412342

Tags

• actor
• film actor
• model

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.