User:Shahinsahar

Lee Young Ae

 * Lee Young Ae (born January 31, 1971 in Seoul, South Korea) is a South Korean actress.

Career
Lee made her debut as a TV model in 1991. After appearing in TV commercials, she started playing in TV dramas and movies.

Her popularity has grown exponentially due to her performance in the popular Korean drama Dae Jang Geum. After its successful broadcast in Korea, the show was then aired overseas for the first time in 2004 and won the hearts of Taiwanese audiences.[2] In 2005, nearly half the population of Hong Kong watched the final episode of the drama.[3] In China, hundreds of million of viewers watched the drama despite the fact that it was shown late at night.[4]

She was awarded Best Actress in the 2005 Blue Dragon Film Awards and 2006 Baeksang Art Awards for her performance in the film Sympathy For Lady Vengeance.

Because of her success, Lee Young-Ae has been invited to visit Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, China and Japan. For the first time in 12 years, NHK had to use NHK Hall to host the NHK show (2006). She was invited to the 2007 Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival in China as an Image Ambassador.[5]

Beside her acting career, she has also been involved with several charities. In 1997 she went to Ethiopia as a NGO Goodwill Ambassador. She went to Thar Desert in 1999 to do a TV show about people in India's lowest social caste. Later in 2001, she published these experiences in her autobiography “A Most Special Love”[6] and donated the income from the sale of the book to charity.

She was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador in 2004 by UNICEF and has since held several charity functions. She has made many donations to schools and hospitals, including the Chosun First Middle School in Harbin[7] and an elementary school in China that was thereafter renamed Lee Young-Ae Elementary School.[8]

In her 2006 autobiography “Young-Ae’s Vow”,[9] she recalled how she became an actress. She tells readers that she was first entered show business after working with Andy Lau in a 1991 chocolate advertisement. In 1995, she made the decision to go to graduate school in order to learn theory of acting. Since then, she has challenged herself in various kinds of acting roles, like that in Dae Jang Geum and later a very different role in Sympathy For Lady Vengeance.

In 2007, she received the Medal of Culture Merit for her contribution to Korean Wave from the South Korean government.[10]

Her major contract in 2006 and 2007 is with LG Corp., a large South Korean conglomerate. She became the Pan-Asian spokesmodel for all LG Electronics' products.