Im Siwan, born Im Woongjae in Busan in 1988, is best known by his stage name Siwan as a member of the K-pop outfit ZE:A. He first tried a mechanical engineering major at the Pusan National University, but he was recruited at a young age by Star Empire and trained to be a member of the group Children of Empire, which debuted on Mnet in 2009. The group later changed its name to ZE:A. His acting career began in 2012 when he joined the cast of the popular television show <Moon...More

Im Siwan, born Im Woongjae in Busan in 1988, is best known by his stage name Siwan as a member of the K-pop outfit ZE:A. He first tried a mechanical engineering major at the Pusan National University, but he was recruited at a young age by Star Empire and trained to be a member of the group Children of Empire, which debuted on Mnet in 2009. The group later changed its name to ZE:A. His acting career began in 2012 when he joined the cast of the popular television show <Moon Embracing the Sun>. Later that year, he took part in the shows <Man from the Equator> and <Standby>, on top of a cameo appearance in <Reply 1997>. His profile as an actor saw a major boost at the end of 2013 when he appeared alongside Song Kangho in the hit 1980s courtroom drama <The Attorney>. The role netted him Best New Actor prizes from the Max Movie Awards, the Marie Claire Film Awards, as well as nominations for the Grand Bell Awards, the Blue Dragon Film Awards and the Baeksang Arts Awards. He continued to appear on TV, scoring a lead role in the wildly successful show <Misaeng: Incomplete Life> (2014), in which he reprised his part from the indie feature <Incomplete Life : Prequel> (2013). He returned to the big screen for his first leading role in a mainstream film with the Korean War drama <A Melody to Remember> (2015), which was released during the Lunar New Year holiday in 2016. In an attempt to change his image, he then took on the role of a university student who takes advantage of his innocent look to scam swindlers in <ONE-LINE> (2016). He followed on this new direction with <The Merciless> (2016), in which he played an undercover cop who infiltrates a drug cartel by posing as a prison inmate. Having begun his mandatory military service in 2017, he was discharged in 2019 and made his long expected comeback in <Hell is Other People>, a horror series based on a hit webtoon of the same name. Five year after <The Merciless>, Im returned to Cannes with the aviation disaster film <Declaration Emergency>.Less