Park Shin-hye - South Korean Women, Facts and Childhood

Park Shin-hye was born on February 18, 1990, in Gwangju, South Korea to parents Park Hyun-jong and Jo Mi-sook. Her older brother is K-pop guitarist and composer Park Shin-won. When she was 11 years old, her family moved to Seoul.

In Gwangju, she was educated at the Hak-Kang Elementary School. After relocating to Seoul, she started attending Youngpa Girls High School, where her sixth-grade English teacher encouraged her to audition for Lee’s ‘Dream Factory’.

Her admittance at the music company marked the beginning of a professional relationship that benefited her insurmountably, as it equipped her with the necessary tools for future pursuits in the entertainment industry.

In 2009, she enrolled at the Chung-Ang University, graduating on February 15, 2016, with a degree in theatre.

Park Shin-hye was chosen from 250 aspirants in 2003 to play the younger version of Choi Ji-woo’s character in the popular television series ‘Stairway to Heaven’. In 2006, she received critical praise for her performance in ‘Tree of Heaven’.

Following her film debut in ‘Love Phobia’ (2006), she landed her first starring role in the horror feature ‘Evil Twin’ (2007). Park gained international fame as a cross-dressing heroine in SBS’ romantic drama ‘You’re Beautiful’ (2009). For the low-budget romantic comedy ‘Cyrano Agency’ (2010), which became a sleeper hit, she received the Most Popular Actress Award in Film at the 47th Baeksang Arts Awards.

In 2011, she was cast in ‘Hayate the Combat Butler,’ a Taiwanese television project based on the Japanese shōnen manga of the same name. A year later, she appeared in the 3rd season of KBS2 one-act drama special ‘Don’t Worry, I’m a Ghost’. Aired on 15 July, the drama won her the Best One-Act Special Actress Award at the KBS Drama Awards.

Starring alongside Lee Jong-suk and Kim Young-kwang in the 2014-15 romantic comedy ‘Pinocchio’, Park portrayed a heroine who suffers from "Pinocchio complex", breaking into fits of violent hiccups whenever she tells a lie.

The popularity of the show made her one of the most bankable endorsers in South Korea. She has modelled for Median, skincare and cosmetics brand Mamonde, Filipino clothing brand Bench, and Austrian jewellery brand Swarovski. She is the first Korean to sign an endorsement deal with Visa.

Among her recent projects, ‘Doctor Crush’ (2016), a medical drama where she was cast as a troubled teenager who later becomes a prominent doctor, is arguably the most noteworthy. It reunited Park with her ‘Stairway to Heaven’ co-star Baek Sung-hyun after almost 13 years. Registering an average 18.40% in audience ratings, the show became a big hit. In 2017, Park is set to appear in the upcoming crime thriller film ‘Silent Witness’.

Over the years, her musical talent has supplemented her acting. Park primarily sings for the soundtracks of her various shows, collaborating with the likes of Lee Min-jung (‘It was You’ for ‘Cyrano Agency’), Song Chang-eui (‘In Space’ for ‘Green Days: Dinosaur and I’), and Yoon Gun (‘I Think of You’ for ‘Music and Lyrics’).

In 2013, Park Shin-hye starred in ‘Miracle in Cell No. 7’, a poignant comedy-drama about friendships between a wrongfully imprisoned mentally challenged man and his criminal cellmates. Park played adult Ye-seung, the daughter of the innocent prisoner. The film got her the Best Supporting Actress Award at the 33rd Korean Association of Film Critics Awards.

She portrayed the main lead Cha Eun-sang in the teen drama ‘The Heirs’ (2013). Unlike most of the characters in the show, Park’s Cha is not set to inherit a fortune and attends high school as a welfare student. The series was an international hit, having sold broadcasting rights in 13 countries.

Park Shin-hye won her first award, an SBS Drama Award for the best young actress in 2003, for ‘Stairway to Heaven’.

’The Heirs’, arguably her most successful outing to date, has garnered her many accolades, including three SBS Drama Awards; one K-Star Magazine Star Awards Ceremony Popularity Award; and two Annual Drama Fever Awards.

In 2015, she received the Prime Minister’s Award for her contribution to Hallyu at the 6th Korean Popular Culture & Arts Awards.

At the 9th Busan International Advertising Festival in 2016, Park was named the best Korean spokesmodel in China.

For ‘Doctor Crush’, she became the recipient of the Best Artist Award at the inaugural Asia Artists Awards in 2016.

The main objective of Park’s ‘Starlight Angel Project’, set up in 2011, is to provide support to underprivileged children both at home and abroad. In Ghana, she set up the Shinhye's Centre in 2009. The facility has a library and an audio-visual hall. In 2016, another centre was established in Manila, Philippines. She is also the sponsor of a Ghanaian girl named Abanne.

She is the 36th inductee of the Korea Food for the Hungry International's Philanthropy Club, a select group of individuals who have donated at least US$85 thousand to the initiative. She was conferred with the honour on November 24, 2016.

Despite being constantly under the media scanner, Park Shin-hye has managed to maintain relative privacy in her personal life. Over the years, she has been linked with several of her co-stars and all of these reported “link-ups” turned out to be rumors.

Following the success of ‘The Heirs’, Chinese media claimed in January 2014, that Park was dating Lee Min-ho. The agencies representing both actors had to release separate statements to quash the rumours.

When her sizzling onscreen chemistry with Lee Jong-suk in ‘Pinocchio’ caught the fans’ imagination, speculations began on their possible off-screen romance. Again the agencies of both the actors had to come forward and explain that they are “just close friends”.

In April 2017, a fresh set of rumours began to fly around about her potential relationship with actor Choi Tae-joon, after they were spotted on a vacation together. Park’s agency ‘Salt Entertainment’ has denied any romantic relationship between the two.

In 2017, Park was ranked at 12th on the Forbes Korea Power Celebrity list.