Yunjin Kim is a South Korean-American film and theater actress born on November 7, 1973, also known as Kim Yun-Jin. She is most renowned for her roles as Sun on the American television series Lost and Bang-Hee in the South Korean film Shiri.
Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated to the United States with her family in 1980, settling in Staten Island, New York. She joined her middle school drama club in the 7th grade and performed in the musical My Fair Lady.
Kim attended the prestigious Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan, followed by the London Academy of Performing Arts and Boston University, where she earned her BFA degree in drama. She is a trained dancer and martial arts fighter, and has remarked that she studied acting, academics, and pronunciation with equal intensity in her zeal to become Americanized quickly.
After graduation, Kim devoted herself full-time to acting, securing several minor parts on MTV, in soap opera-style dramas on ABC, and on the off-Broadway stage. In 1997, she starred in Splendid Holiday, a Korean TV drama shot on location in New York, before returning to Korea and being cast in the TV drama Wedding Dress.
Kim's breakthrough debut came in the 1999 film Shiri, South Korea's first blockbuster film, which became the highest-grossing film in Korean history at the time. She continued her association with Kang Je-gyu in The Legend of Gingko and appeared in several other films, including a Japanese film and a feature set in Los Angeles.
In 2002, Kim took the lead role in Ardor, the feature film debut of documentarist Byun Young-ju, which was invited to screen in a non-competitive section at the 2003 Berlin film festival. She then started appearing in the U.S. television series Lost, which ran for six seasons.
In 2006, Maxim named Kim number 98 on its annual Hot 100 List, and she was featured on the cover of Stuff magazine. In 2013, she had a leading role in the ABC drama series Mistresses, and in 2018, she returned to Korean television by headlining the series Ms. Ma, Nemesis.
