Lee Jung-hyun enjoys children's vacation break at 45, from techno icon to Netflix global #1
At 45, the actress and singer posted a casual sofa photo captioned "children's vacation"—a rare pause in a career spanning film awards, a techno-era debut album, and a Netflix global chart-topper.
Lee Jung-hyun, 45, posted a photo on August 13 showing her smiling at the camera from a sofa, captioning it "아가들방학" — children's vacation — alongside a phrase hinting at dessert. A rare public exhale between decades of relentless work.
She debuted in 1996 with the film Flower Petals (꽃잎), winning Best New Actress at both the Daejong Film Award and the Blue Dragon Film Award. Three years later she pivoted to music. Her first album Let's Go To My Star dropped in 1999, and its title track Wa ("와") is credited with driving the techno boom of that era. Between 1999 and 2003 she collected multiple rookie and main prizes at major broadcaster music awards and the Golden Disk Awards.
The acting career kept pace. She took Best Actress at the 36th Blue Dragon Film Awards for Alice in Earnest Land (성실한 나라의 앨리스). The 2020 blockbuster Peninsula (반도), in which she played lead character Min-jung, crossed the domestic break-even point of 2.5 million viewers. She also appeared in Myeongryang (명량), the 10-million-viewer film.
On the small screen she joined KBS 2TV's New Product Launch Paik's Diner (신상출시 편스토랑) and won the Best Excellence Award in the Reality category at the 2025 KBS Entertainment Awards. She runs a YouTube channel, Lee Jung-hyun's Home-cooked Restaurant (이정현의 집밥레스토랑).
The most recent chapter pushed her into directing. In 2025 she wrote, directed, produced, and starred as Sumi in the short film Let's Go Flower Viewing (꽃놀이 간다). Her follow-up directorial work Coming of Age (성인식) was presented at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival. On the acting side, her lead role as Choi Jun-kyung in the Netflix original series Parasyte: The Grey (기생수: 더 그레이) reached No. 1 on Netflix's weekly global rankings.
She married orthopedic surgeon Park Yu-jung (born 1983) on April 7, 2019. The couple have two daughters: Park Seo-ah, born in 2022, and Park Seo-woo, born in 2024. The "children's vacation" caption now makes complete sense.
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