Hoyeon Rising

CATAPULTED TO GLOBAL FAME THROUGH HER BREAKOUT ROLE IN NETFLIX’S SQUID GAME AND COMMANDING PRESENCE ON THE RUNWAYS, HOYEON TELLS ZING TSJENG SHE’S JUST GETTING STARTED

PHOTOGRAPHED BY SHARIF HAMZA STYLED BY CHARLES VARENNE MAKEUP BY DAME PAT McGRATH

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Hoyeon was visibly nervous. Dressed in a glittering bespoke Louis Vuitton gown and with a traditional daenggi ribbon in her hair, the South Korean actor was at the Screen Actors Guild Awards with her Squid Game co-stars, waiting to hear if she would win best female actor. As the hosts read out her name, there was a moment of shock — then she leapt up and, holding hands with her translator, barrelled on stage to receive the award that would make her the first female actor from a non-English-language series to be recognised at the prestigious ceremony.

“At first, I did feel a little pressure about the fact that people are thinking of me as a representative of Korea,” she tells me on Zoom from her apartment in Seoul, reflecting on that moment three years on. “I even had some doubts about myself — whether I was really qualified or the right person to take on this role.”

Hoyeon is makeup-free in a loose khaki T-shirt from Japanese workwear brand Kapital, her naturally wavy hair scraped back in a messy ponytail. What helped, she says with an appreciative smile, is the support of other people in the industry. She recounts how, at the SAG Awards, actors Sandra Oh and Greta Lee came running up to congratulate her — a moment of mutual adoration that was captured on camera and subsequently went viral. “It just brought home the fact that this Korean heritage that we’re sharing, it naturally makes us rely on each other, wherever we are,” she says. “I know that they have my back.”