Yu Ji-tae

Yoo Ji-tae is one of those Korean actors who doesn't need to do much to command a scene — he just walks in and the room temperature drops. I first locked onto him as the villain in Oldboy (2003), and honestly that performance alone would've been enough to cement his reputation; he brings this eerie, coiled-spring menace that never tips into cartoonish. What I find genuinely impressive, though, is that he didn't ride that one iconic role — he kept diversifying across film, TV, and stage, then stepped behind the camera as a director too. A Chung-Ang University grad who started as a fashion model, he has that rare combination of striking presence and real craft underneath it. He's not the flashy self-promotional type, which somehow makes every project he picks feel considered and worth watching.

Name (English)

Yu Ji-tae

Name (Japanese)

ユ・ジテ

Reading

ゆ・じて

Born

April 13, 1976 (age 50)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aries / Dragon

Origin

Seoul, South Korea

Occupation

actor / film actor / stage actor / television actor / film director

High school

Whimoon High School

University

Chung-Ang University

• Official sitehttps://www.yoomovie.com/
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/jt_db/
• Xhttps://x.com/youjitae
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoo%20Ji-tae
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%A6%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B8%E3%83%86
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q489475

Tags

• actor
• film actor
• stage actor

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.