Song Kang-Ho

Song Kang-ho is a leading South Korean film actor. A graduate of Busan Kyungsang College, he started his career in theatre groups without professional training as an actor. He made his stage premiere in 1991, in the play Dongseung.

In 1996 Song started appearing in film roles and his 1997 part in No. 3, as a gangster training a group of recruits, won him his first acting award, at the Blue Dragon Film Awards. Song's cachet rose with his high-profile supporting role in the 1999 box-office hit Shiri. In 2000, Song received his first leading roles as a wrestler in The Foul King and as a North Korean sergeant in Joint Security Area.

In recent years he has received critical acclaim for his portrayals of a vengeful father in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002); an incompetent rural detective in Memories of Murder (2003); a barber who dotes on his only son in The President's Barber (2004); and a semi-intelligent but doting father in the The Host (2006). He won Best Actor in the 2007 Asian Film Awards.