From Yoon Ru-jeong to the meme "Ms. Luo", why is "Korean Grandma" getting older and more popular?

Source: Global Times

With "Minari", Yin Ruzhen's representative work is finally no longer "Yin Canteen". In Minari, a film about Korean immigrants, Yoon Joo-jeong plays a tough grandmother who takes care of her grandchildren from South Korea to the United States, a role that has earned Yoon Joo-jeong more than 30 acting awards at major awards ceremonies in Europe and the United States. This is also the best gift for the 55th anniversary of the 74-year-old Yin Ruzhen's debut.

Popularity, shadow, marriage and children, divorce, return

Among the Korean grandmother actresses, Yoon Yoo-jeong is a relatively young one. After debuting as an open recruiter in the third issue of Toyo Radio TBC in 1966, she was successful in playing the evil woman Jang Hee-woo in the Korean drama "Jang Hee-woo". In the same year, she made her debut in the movie "Fire Girl", and won the best actress in many large Korean film festivals such as Daejong and Qinglong, and became a star. At the peak of her career, Yoon Joo-jeong chose to marry Cho Young-nam, a Talented South Korean musician, quit the acting world, and accompanied her husband to settle in the United States. In 1984, Yoon Ru-jeong ended her 13-year marriage due to her husband's cheating and returned to South Korea to restart her acting career. After that, Yin Ruzhen won the "What Is Love", "The Men of the Bathhouse Owner's House", "Come on! Works such as "Jin Shun" returned to the audience's field of vision.

In the Korean industry, Yoon Yoo-jeong's acting skills have been unanimously recognized, and she is known as the "godmother of the actress world". She also speaks fluent English and shines in reality TV variety shows such as "Fancy Sister" and "Yin Canteen".

Emoji "Ms. Luo"

South Korea's "national grandmother" is on a par with Yoon Ru-jeong, and Luo Wenji, who was born in Beijing and debuted as a voice actor. Luo Wenji has begun to play the old man at the age of 42, and the old actor often reveals a natural sense of joy, which is easy for the audience to take over the role. Whether it is a kind grandmother, a strong mother, a mean mother-in-law, Luo Wenji has not refused, and finally she ushered in her own highlight moment in 2005: first played a mean mother-in-law in the hit Korean drama "My Name is Kim Sanshun", and then appeared on the screen for the first time, playing the male protagonist's mother in the movie "Crying Fist", and won the Best Supporting Actress Award at the 42nd Dazhong Awards.

For Chinese audiences, many people are most familiar with her duplicitous old lady role in the sitcom "Funny Family" in 2006, and there are still many memes she performs in the film. In 2013, In the rejuvenating movie "Strange Her", Luo Wenji played a widowed grandmother who worked for her son for most of her life, and kim so-hyun played the scene of his grandfather riding a motorcycle and carrying Luo Wenji in the film, which is still regarded as a classic. This comedy has also been remade into the domestic movie "Return to 20 Years Old". In 2017, Luo Wenji played a difficult "ghost horse grandmother" in the comfort women movie "I Can Say", presenting this heavy theme in a comedic way. With this role, Luo Wenji swept the Korean Blue Dragon Film Award, the Big Bell Award and the Baeksang Art Award that year. This year, Luo Wenji was 76 years old, and at the age when she could get the "Lifetime Achievement Award", she became the "Queen of the Three Shadows".

Reaching the peak of her acting career in her later years, there is also Kim Keiko, who is the same age as Luo Wenji. She was best known to Chinese audiences for the graceful and somewhat eccentric empress dowager in the 2006 hit modern court drama "Palace". In the drama "Mama Has a Horn" and the movie "Mother", you can also see the figure of Kim Keiko. And what really showed her acting skills to the fullest was the Korean drama "Dazzling" starring Kim Hye-ko at the age of 77. In this drama with Kim Hye-ko as the first heroine and Mesozoic actress Han Ji-min as the second heroine, she plays an old man with dementia who treats his son as her husband and her daughter-in-law as her mother-in-law. More than 50,000 viewers on Douban scored a high score of 9.0 for the show, and she also beat a number of popular actresses with the show, winning the honor of Baixiang Tv in 2019.

Why is the "post-70s" getting older and more popular?

These "70+" Korean actresses frequently won the best actress in South Korea, but also became the pillar of popular variety shows, and even created history for Korean movies. The reason is, on the one hand, that these old drama bones themselves have a straightforward personality and are unpretentious, open-minded coupled with a pleasing personality and fashionable private clothes, so that they are highly sought after by Young Koreans. Another reason is that the Korean film and television circle not only respects the elderly, but also praises the elderly. In 2010, the movie "Grandma Bandit Group" used Luo Wenji, Kim So-mi and Kim Hye-wook as the heroines to tell the funny story of the "bank robber group" robbing the bank with an average age of 65 years old; in 2016, Kim Hye-ko, Luo Wenji and Yoon Ruzhen co-starred in the drama "My Dear Friends", which gathered a group of Korean old drama bones to tell the bitterness and happiness of the "Twilight Youth". Although there are also popular actors such as Zhao Yincheng and Han Zhimin in these film and television works with old actors as the main line, they do not force young actors as the core, and they do not impose various "love + narcissism" dramas that annoy the audience. This kind of respect for the elderly has finally achieved these classic works and also achieved the "national grandmother".

The popularity of these "national grandmothers" is part of the benign operation of the Korean film and television industry. After all, good film and television works not only need popular stars with their own traffic, big-name actors with screenwriters into the group, but also the light and heat of old drama bones.