So Ji-sub

Who he is

So Ji-sub is a South Korean actor and the head of 51K, the company that manages him. His agency’s own credit list opens with SBS dramas in 2002 and 2003 and runs unbroken to 2026: fourteen television series, eleven films and a 2018 tvN programme. Among them are the 2004 drama The Korea Times renders as I’m Sorry, I Love You, which he himself calls the opening of the first chapter of his acting life, and Netflix’s Mercy for None in 2025, his last work before this one.

2026

Agent Kim Reactivated, the ten-episode SBS drama that ran from 26 June to 25 July 2026, is his first SBS drama since 2013 on his agency’s list, and his first title at the top of Netflix’s global chart. He plays the title character, whom The Korea Times describes as a bank accounting manager forced to confront a dangerous past to rescue his kidnapped teenage daughter. The series passed 20 per cent nationwide within four episodes — the second-highest-rated Friday-Saturday drama in SBS’s history, by the same paper’s account — and held first place on Netflix’s Top 10 for non-English TV for three consecutive weeks. Of the role he told The Korea Times: “Rather than just the action, I found Kim’s backstory and grief far more compelling.”

Recognition

51K’s page lists the grand prize at the 2018 MBC Drama Awards, top actor awards at the 2015 KBS Drama Awards and the 2013 and 2012 SBS Drama Awards, best new actor at the 29th Blue Dragon Film Awards in 2008, and the best actor prize at the 41st Baeksang Arts Awards in 2005.