Park Hae-joon
Park Hae-joon is an actor, born 1976.
Park Sang-woo works as Park Hae-joon, and he built the career in the slowest available order. He started in 2005 on the stages of Daehangno, Seoul's theatre district, joined the Chaimu company in 2010, and did not make a film until 2012, when he turns up as a loan shark in Helpless. Recognition came with the independent film Fourth Place, which brought him Best New Actor and Best Actor nominations at the Buil Film Awards and the Wildflower Film Awards respectively.
For most of the 2010s he was the character actor you recognise without placing. Monk Gyeom-duk in My Mister. Park Seon-chang in Believer and again in Believer 2. Chun Kwan-woong in the office drama Incomplete Life. Mubaek in Arthdal Chronicles. Roh Tae-geon in 12.12: The Day. Park Tae-soo in Emergency Declaration.
The World of the Married changed the scale of it in 2020. As Lee Tae-o he is the husband whose behaviour drives the entire series, and it works because he plays the man as ordinary rather than monstrous, which is considerably more upsetting. The 8 Show, in 2024, gave him another version of that ordinariness curdling under pressure, and When Life Gives You Tangerines in 2025 finally handed him a good man to play, the middle-aged Yang Gwan-sik, with no trick in it at all.
He now occupies the position Korean television reserves for a handful of men in their late forties: the actor you cast when the part needs a real interior.
Movies (24)
- Humint (2026)
- 20th Century Girl (2022)
- Pavane (2026)
- Yadang: The Snitch (2025)
- 12.12: The Day (2023)
- Emergency Declaration (2022)
- Believer (2018)
- Believer 2 (2023)
- Hwayi: A Monster Boy (2013)
- The 8th Night (2021)
- Tune in for Love (2019)
- Bring Me Home (2019)
- Start-Up (2019)
- Jo Pil-ho: The Dawning Rage (2019)
- Helpless (2012)
- Genome Hazard (2014)
- Unforgettable (2016)
- Heart Blackened (2017)
- In Our Prime (2022)
- Missing (2016)
- Warriors of the Dawn (2017)
- The Accidental Detective (2015)
- Fourth Place (2016)
- Pluto (2013)
TV (16)
- When Life Gives You Tangerines (2025)
- We Are All Trying Here (2026)
- My Mister (2018)
- Arthdal Chronicles (2019)
- Incomplete Life (2014)
- Aema (2025)
- Tempest (2025)
- The 8 Show (2024)
- Doctor Stranger (2014)
- The World of the Married (2020)
- Wanted (2016)
- My Beautiful Bride (2015)
- Jeon Woo Chi (2012)
- My Fair Lady (2009)
- Love, Take Two (2025)
- I Have Not Done My Best (2022)
Where to start with Park Hae-joon
The World of the Married is the fastest way to understand why he became a lead. Lee Tae-o is written as a straightforwardly hateful man and Park plays him as a weak one instead, which is worse and far more interesting to watch.
Then correct the impression. When Life Gives You Tangerines gives him a decent, undemonstrative husband to play across a lifetime and is the warmest thing on his CV, while The 8 Show sits between the two, an ordinary man finding out what he is prepared to do.
On the film side, Believer and 12.12: The Day are the big ensembles where he holds his own among much starrier casts. My Mister is the quiet recommendation, a monk in a series with no interest in hurrying, and Hwayi: A Monster Boy is the early one worth digging out.