Born in 1972, YANG Heung-joo first approached acting when he joined the youth drama society Straw Thatch, a student federation for the Chuncheon region, Gangwon Province, when he was a senior in high school. He first stood on stage in 1989 in a production of Tennessee WILLIAMS’ <The Glass Menagerie>. After graduation, he became a bonafide theater actor starting with the play <Numbness> which he performed in 1990 with the Taebaek Stage company (now Theater Socie...More

Born in 1972, YANG Heung-joo first approached acting when he joined the youth drama society Straw Thatch, a student federation for the Chuncheon region, Gangwon Province, when he was a senior in high school. He first stood on stage in 1989 in a production of Tennessee WILLIAMS’ <The Glass Menagerie>. After graduation, he became a bonafide theater actor starting with the play <Numbness> which he performed in 1990 with the Taebaek Stage company (now Theater Society), and he notably played in <Chilsoo and Mansoo>, <The Golden Bean Patch> and <Old Thief Story>. In 2001, he even won one of the Best Acting prizes awarded by the National Theater Festival for his performance in <Chilsoo and Mansoo>. After a degree in environmental sciences, YANG juggled for a while with his stage career and his day work as an appraiser, but in 2010 he made the difficult decision to quit his job and dedicate himself entirely to his artistic ambitions. As the most well-known actor in Chuncheon and now director of Theater Society, YANG was naturally the first pick of director JANG Woo-jin, another Chuncheon native, when he was casting for his debut feature <A Fresh Start> (2014). The two worked together again for JANG’s next two projects, <Autumn, Autumn> (2016) and <Winter’s Night> (2018), both of which are set in Chuncheon. YANG continued to earn wide recognition from critics with his starring role in the indie darling <Moving On> (2019) from YUN Dan-bi. YANG is also the Regional Director for the Gangwon Province of the Korean Actors Association.Less