Actor Lee Soon-jae, who had been active as the oldest working actor, died on the 25th at age 91.
His agency said Lee Soon-jae closed his eyes early this morning. The funeral altar has not yet been set up.
Born in 1934 in Hoeryong, North Hamgyong Province, Lee Soon-jae moved to Seoul with his grandparents at age 4. On the family register, he was born in 1935. Lee Soon-jae graduated from Seoul High School and the Department of Philosophy at Seoul National University. In college, he was captivated by the film Hamlet starring Laurence Olivier and chose the path of acting.
Lee Soon-jae's first work was the 1956 play Beyond the Horizon. The following year he appeared in the TV drama Blue Horizon, expanding his stage. After becoming a first-batch exclusive actor at TBC in 1965, he appeared in as many as 140 dramas including Dongui Bogam, Again and Again, Era of the Three Kims, Men of the Bathhouse, Rustic Period, Toji, and Angry Mom. Including bit parts, he was said to have appeared in more than 30 works in a single month.
In particular, one of his signature works, What Is Love (1991–1992), recorded a 65% viewership rating, and he was called the character "Daebal's father."
Lee Soon-jae did not stop. In his 70s, he appeared in the sitcom High Kick! (2006) and High Kick Through the Roof (2009), showcasing comic acting. The "Adult-video Soon-jae" character even won him young fans. He also appeared on the variety show Grandpas Over Flowers (2013).
Approaching his 90s, Lee Soon-jae returned to the theater stage. He performed in Salut d'Amour (2016), My Grandfather Henri (2017), and King Lear (2021). In 2023, he tried directing for the first time and staged The Seagull, a play by Russian literary figure Anton Chekhov.
Until he temporarily halted activities in Oct. due to health issues, Lee Soon-jae also appeared in the play Waiting for Waiting for Godot and the KBS 2TV drama Dog Sound. Last year, at the KBS Drama Awards, he became the oldest grand prize winner on record.
Lee Soon-jae also briefly entered politics, serving as a 14th-term National Assembly member with the Democratic Liberal Party. In the 1992 14th general election, he ran in Seoul's Jungnang-gap district as the ruling Democratic Liberal Party's candidate and was elected, after which, as a lawmaker, he served as a deputy spokesperson of the party and a secretary of the Korea-Japan Parliamentarians' Union.
He consistently took an interest in students aspiring to become actors and, until recently, taught students as a distinguished professor in the Department of Acting Arts at Gachon University.