Song Hye-kyo in a December 2021 interview for Now, We Are Breaking Up

“You Did Well, Hye-kyo”: Song Hye-kyo’s Road From The Glory to Netflix’s Tantara With Gong Yoo

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Part 3 of 3 in The Face of Asia Who Won't Win With Her Face: Song Hye-kyo

Featured photo: Song Hye-kyo in a December 2021 interview for Now, We Are Breaking Up. Photo: Viu Indonesia via YouTube / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 (cropped).

Previously: eight years of flops she called “growth,” then Descendants of the Sun at 38.8% and the KBS Grand Prize. Read Part 2.

July 2023: “You did well, Hye-kyo”

On July 19, 2023, the 2nd Blue Dragon Series Awards gave its Grand Prize to Song Hye-kyo for The Glory. She said, “I love and thank writer Kim Eun-sook for trusting me with Moon Dong-eun,” and then turned the speech toward herself: “For the first time, I want to praise myself. You did well, Hye-kyo” (OSEN, July 19, 2023; Aju Business Daily, July 20, 2023). It was the night an actress 27 years into her career, holding her third Grand Prize, praised herself for the first time. When I heard that line, I clapped along in front of my screen. That same night, Best Actress went to Suzy for Anna.

Also read: "By the Start of 2027, Together": IU Now

2018–2021: the boyfriend from Cuba, and Ha Young-eun

In tvN’s Encounter in November 2018, she played hotel CEO Cha Soo-hyun, and Park Bo-gum played Kim Jin-hyuk, a young man she meets by chance in Cuba. Its peak rating of 10.3% put it on the list of the highest-rated cable dramas in Korean history (Wikipedia).

In SBS’s 2021 Now, We Are Breaking Up, she became Ha Young-eun, head of design at a fashion company, and that same year she became Fendi’s first Korean ambassador (Wikipedia).

2022–2023: Moon Dong-eun, who never smiles

Kim Eun-sook, writer of Descendants of the Sun, came back with a completely different script. In Netflix’s The Glory, Moon Dong-eun is a school-violence survivor who bets her whole life on revenge against her tormentors. An actress who had been the queen of melodrama for more than 20 years wiped the smile off her face on screen. When Part 2 came out in March 2023, it hit No. 1 on Netflix’s non-English TV chart with 123.59 million hours in one week, and with 380.38 million hours in its first 28 days it became, at the time, Netflix’s seventh most-watched non-English series ever (Variety).

On April 28, the first words of her Best Actress (TV) speech at the Baeksang Arts Awards came straight in Moon Dong-eun’s voice: “I won an award, Yeon-jin. I’m so excited.” The audience erupted, and Lim Ji-yeon, who played Park Yeon-jin, clapped (OSEN, April 29, 2023). Then she said, “I really wanted to win this.” JTBC Voyage’s video of that moment has passed 6.88 million views.

2025: Dark Nuns and her first YouTube talk show

In the January 2025 film Dark Nuns, she played Sister Junia, who takes on an exorcism. It was her first leading film role in 11 years, and the film passed its break-even point of 1.6 million viewers on February 9 (MTN, May 16, 2025). The line from the start of Part 1, “I’m past the age of winning roles with my face,” came from an interview for this film.

That same month she sat down for the first time on a YouTube talk show, Jung Jae-hyung’s Yojeong Jaehyung, and said: “As a woman and as an actress, I’ve had hard experiences and happy ones, and through all of those experiences I think I’ve studied life well” (Sidae, January 13, 2025). On Davichi member Kang Min-kyung’s channel, she covered Uhm Jung-hwa’s “Hu-ae” and donated the proceeds to help abandoned dogs (Vogue Korea, January 13, 2025). In that vlog, stylist Kim Hyun-kyung recalled that when her mother fell ill and she went back home in her early twenties, Song sent her a large sum of money: “More than the amount, I sometimes think of the one thing Hye-kyo unnie said to me back then” (Elle Korea, January 14, 2025).

In October, she made a special appearance as the genie “Jiniya” in Genie, Make a Wish, her third project with Kim Eun-sook, sharing the screen with Suzy, who had won at that same awards show two years earlier (Sports Kyunghyang, October 13, 2025).

2026: a new agency, and Tantara

In June 2026 her contract with UAA, her agency since 2012, ended. She wrote, “I was truly happy and grateful for the time I spent with UAA” (New Daily, June 26, 2026). In September she became a global ambassador for Bottega Veneta (Vogue Korea, September 18, 2026), and on October 23 she signed an exclusive contract with STAND (Soompi).

The next day, at Netflix Korea’s 10th-anniversary event, she stood side by side with Gong Yoo. Noh Hee-kyung’s Tantara (Korean title Slowly, Intensely) is a 22-episode series about Min-ja (Song Hye-kyo) and Dong-gu (Gong Yoo), who climb out of poverty into the music industry of the 1960s to 1980s. Its budget is reported at about 70 billion won (about $49 million) (Elle Korea, January 14, 2025), and it premieres on December 11 (What’s on Netflix, October 22, 2026). It is her third project with Noh, after Worlds Within and That Winter, the Wind Blows. Netflix has not released a full trailer yet; the first footage is in its 2026 Korea lineup reel.

15 years, Korean signs in 40 places abroad

In July 2026, 10,000 Korean-English guidebooks were placed at the Old Korean Legation in Washington, D.C. The project was planned by Sungshin Women’s University professor Seo Kyoung-duk and paid for by Song Hye-kyo. The pair’s donations began with a Korean-language guide at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 2012 and continued to the Yun Bong-gil memorial in Shanghai and the Ahn Jung-geun memorial in Harbin, reaching 40 places in 11 cities over 15 years (Sports Kyunghyang, July 2, 2026; Wikipedia).

The name of the middle-schooler who won a school-uniform model contest in 1996 is, 30 years later, printed in Korean guidebooks at 40 sites abroad. She said she’d rather hear “your acting was so good” than “you’re pretty.” Whatever she does next, I’ll be first in line to see it.

Where to watch Song Hye-kyo, at a glance (checked on JustWatch, October 25, 2026) – Netflix (US and Korea): The Glory, Encounter, That Winter, the Wind Blows, Genie, Make a Wish (special appearance) · Korea only: Soonpoong Clinic, All In, Now, We Are Breaking Up, Hwang Jin Yi – Rakuten Viki (US): Descendants of the Sun, Now, We Are Breaking Up, My Brilliant Life – OnDemandKorea (US): Autumn in My Heart, Full House – Watcha (Korea): Autumn in My Heart, Full House, Worlds Within, The Grandmaster, Descendants of the Sun – AMC+ (US): Dark Nuns – Netflix: Tantara, premieres December 11, 2026

The Face of Asia Who Won't Win With Her Face: Song Hye-kyo · Part 3 of 3

That’s the end of the series.

← Part 2: Song Hye-kyo Called Her Flops "Growth." Eight Years Later, Descendants of the Sun Hit 2 Billion Views

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