Sul Kyung-gu

Who is Sul Kyung-gu?

Sul Kyung-gu (설경구) is an actor who came to film from the stage. Cine21’s person database records under debut that he “was doing theatre and came into film through director Jang Sun-woo’s A Petal”, and its credits list runs to fifty-two films. The earliest of them is Girls’ Night Out (1998), in which he plays Gyu-sik.

His name became widely known with Lee Chang-dong’s Peppermint Candy (1999), in which he plays Kim Yeong-ho. In 2002 he played Hong Jong-du in the same director’s Oasis and Kang Chul-jung in Public Enemy, a role he returned to twice, in Another Public Enemy (2005) and Public Enemy Returns (2008). Silmido (2003), Rikidozan (2004), Haeundae (2009), Hope (2013) and Cold Eyes (2013) sit between them.

The later part of the list runs from The Merciless and 1987 in 2017 through The Book of Fish (2019), Kingmaker (2021), Yaksha: Ruthless Operations and I Want to Know Your Parents (2022), Phantom and A Normal Family (2023). Good News is on the 2025 line beside Possible Love, and 바위 (Bawi, “rock”), in which he plays Eul-seok, is the 2026 entry.

Awards

The prizes Cine21 records as won are best new actor at the 37th Grand Bell Awards (Peppermint Candy), best actor at the 1st Korean Film Awards (Oasis), best actor at the 39th Grand Bell Awards (Public Enemy), best actor in the film section of the 50th Baeksang Arts Awards (Hope), actor of the year at the 17th Director’s Cut Awards (Memoir of a Murderer), best actor at the 54th Grand Bell Awards (The Merciless), best actor at the 42nd Blue Dragon Film Awards and at the 41st Korean Association of Film Critics Awards (The Book of Fish), and best actor in the film section of the 58th Baeksang Arts Awards (Kingmaker). He has taken the Blue Dragon popular star award three times, at the 29th, 34th and 38th ceremonies.

2026

He plays the loan shark Noja in Netflix’s Mousetrap, released on 28 August 2026. Noja chases the novelist Moon-jae for the money he lost when Moon-jae disappeared, and ends up allied with him against “The Rat”. It is his first project alongside Ryu Jun-yeol. At the press conference on 20 August 2026 he said the script was the most entertaining he had read at the time, and added that the story has neither heroes nor supernatural powers.

The series that first paired the two actors stayed three weeks in Netflix’s non-English TV top 10 and gathered 8.2 million views by Netflix’s weekly count. Its week-by-week places are on the Mousetrap page.