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HoYeon Jung, endearing heroine of Squid Game and new muse of Louis Vuitton
HoYeon Jung, the heroine of the South Korean Netflix series Squid Game, who has become a global phenomenon, has become an international ambassador for Louis Vuitton. A new prestigious role that marks the return of the young woman to her first love. Portrait of a future star.
Actress HoYeon Jung, revelation of the series Squid Game
In Netflix’s scary and metaphysical South Korean series, Squid Game, we almost only see her. HoYeon Jung, 27, plays Kang Sae-byeok, a sunny, solitary and rebellious character whose sweet face illuminates the darkness of the show. Ready to make any sacrifice for her family, the young girl shows boundless energy and recklessness that touched the audience. Quickly becoming one of the leading Netflix heroes of the moment, Kang attracts the curiosity of fans of the phenomenon series that symbolizes the dangers of capitalism through deadly games. And since its launch on September 17, it is the name of HoYeon Jung that has attracted all eyes.
The number of followers on the South Korean’s Instagram account has climbed from 400,000 to 16 million in just three weeks. A meteoric rise that raises the young woman to the rank of the most followed actress in her country. A country that culturally has the wind in its sails with the success of the group BTS and many K-Pop idols. It is therefore not surprising that Louis Vuitton has chosen her as the new international ambassador, she who has seduced beyond borders. This prestigious role seems all the more obvious as modeling is in fact the first job of the young woman who counts among her friends members of the band BlackPink.
HoYeon Jung’s fashion debut
Before Squid Game, HoYeon Jung had only appeared in a few music videos, as well as in a video announcing a collaboration between Pharrell Williams and Chanel (dating from 2019). But it was as a top model that the Seoul native became known, when she was only 16 years old. Still a high school student, she didn’t really know what to do later in her life, and her mother had advised her to take this path because of her height (1.76 m).
A choice that paid off because the young girl quickly ended up among the finalists of the reality TV show
Korea’s Next Top Model
and began working for many fashion brands. Signed to Esteem Models, the largest Korean modeling agency, the young girl who initially wore hair dyed flamboyant red, walked the runway or posed for Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Marc Jacobs, Dolce & Gabbana, Chanel, Lanvin and Burberry.
A future career in cinema?
But the idea of acting began to run through his head. She could see herself playing one of the badass action heroines of Charlie’s Angels on screen. At the beginning of 2020, she joined an acting agency and got her hands on scripts in English. A few weeks later, in the middle of preparing for New York Fashion Week, she received the script for
Squid Game
and immediately recorded an audition video after a few days of hard work. Captivated by the images shot by the young girl, the director, Hwang Dong-hyeok, who was having trouble finding out who would wear the jumpsuit marked with the number 067, saw in her a “gift sent by God.”
At first scared, due to her lack of experience, of not being up to this major project, HoYeon Jung comes out of it with flying colors in this performance as physical as it is emotional. Maybe because she too felt, like her character, very alone when she left her country for the United States in 2016. During long plane rides and nights in hotels, she found solace in the Midsommar movies
(2019) , The Dead Don’t Die (2019), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Kill Bill (2003). She was also particularly caught up in the performances of Frances McDormand, Doona Bae, Lupita Nyong’o and Adam Driver. Without suspecting that one day, she would be the one we would admire on the small screen. Waiting for the big one?
Squid Game (2021) by Hwang Dong-hyuk, available on Netflix.
