Ryoo Seung-bum

Ryoo Seung-bum (born August 9, 1980) is a South Korean actor.

The 1980s-set comedy was a minor hit, selling nearly 1.7 million tickets and solidifying Ryoo's star status.

Ryoo made his theater debut in Lee Sang-woo's stage play Bieonso ("Toilet" ).

His older brother Ryoo Seung-wan was an aspiring filmmaker, and from 1996 to 1999, the elder Ryoo shot four low-budget short films starring himself, his younger brother Seung-bum, and several friends.

He made a name for himself in his older brother director Ryoo Seung-wan's eclectic films, notably Die Bad (his acting debut in 2000), Arahan (2004), Crying Fist (2005), The Unjust (2010), and The Berlin File (2013).

Known for his manic energy, casual demeanor and subtle ability to command a scene, over the years Ryoo Seung-bum has cemented his status as one of Korea's top actors.

Ryoo Seung-bum was born in Asan, South Chungcheong Province.

His family moved to Seoul, where he first studied at Jamjeon Elementary School, before moving back to a small town in South Chungcheong Province called Onyang, where he spent his middle school years.

He returned to Seoul to study at Daedong Technical High School, but dropped out before graduating.

Ryoo later said he had a hard time finding the motivation to study, but acting would bring about an important change in his life, giving him something he could immerse himself into.

In strikingly diverse styles but with a common narrative, these shorts were re-edited, combined and released in 2000 as Ryoo Seung-wan's feature directorial debut Die Bad.

Critically acclaimed as powerfully visceral, gut-wrenching, and searingly angry, the film became an instant cult hit, earning attention for the Ryoo brothers.

One review described Ryoo Seung-bum's acting debut as "a startling, naturalistic turn," and he won Best New Actor at the Grand Bell Awards.

Their success continued with Ryoo Seung-wan's follow-up Dachimawa Lee, a 35-minute short film parodying Korean action films of the 60s and 70s, Bruce Lee, Shaw Brothers and Jackie Chan flicks, and the machismo kitsch of old Korean melodramas, coupled with over-the-top voice dubbing and deliberately mistimed action.

Ryoo played Washington, a young thug with a heart of gold and a huge afro.

The short, streamed on the now-defunct Cine4M website, was enormously popular online.

Ryoo next starred in Yim Soon-rye's Waikiki Brothers, a 2001 film chronicling the fate of a shoddy nightclub band, with its bittersweet mixture of boyhood aspirations and the love of music, and the despair and reality of adulthood.

Ryoo had a supporting role as a young waiter eager to learn how to play the drums and perform onstage.

Later that year, he ventured into television, as part of the main cast of 50-episode family drama Wonderful Days, along with Ji Sung, Park Sun-young, and Gong Hyo-jin.

Ryoo received Best New Actor for TV from the Baeksang Arts Awards.

In 2002, he appeared in Ryoo Seung-wan's sophomore effort, the gangster/heist film No Blood No Tears starring Jeon Do-yeon and Jung Jae-young.

The film was a critical and box office disappointment.

But he was starting to make a name for himself in the industry independent of his older brother.

Ryoo joined Jung, Shin Ha-kyun and an ensemble cast of Jang Jin regulars in No Comment (also known as Mudjima Family), an omnibus made of three short films.

His performance as a harassed concierge was one of the highlights of the first short Enemies in Four Directions.

He also had a small role in Park Chan-wook's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.

He then reunited with Noh Hee-kyung, the writer of Wonderful Days, in the TV drama Solitude, a May–December romance between a man in his early twenties and a much older single mother who is also terminally ill (played by Lee Mi-sook).

Conduct Zero capped Ryoo's year, in his first big screen leading role as the tough, fists-over-brains "king" of his high school who unexpectedly and awkwardly falls for a nerdy girl (played by Lim Eun-kyung).

Directed by stage/TV actor Park Kwang-jung, Bieonso ran at the Dongsoong Art Center from November 4 to December 28, 2003.

For the TV program Nursery Story, Ryoo and Yoon Jin-seo appeared in Christmas Lovers, which aired in four five-minute daily installments on MBC in December 22 to December 25, 2003.

In Min Kyu-dong's short Secrets and Lies (released by the Korean Academy of Film Arts in the 2003 omnibus Twentidentity), Ryoo's character finds himself in a dilemma when his fiancee's mother hits on him.

Ryoo began 2004 in the TV series Sunlight Pours Down co-starring Song Hye-kyo and Jo Hyun-jae, but it proved unmemorable to audiences.

Thereafter Ryoo would concentrate solely on film.

In Ryoo Seung-wan's Arahan, he played a hapless traffic policeman who discovers he has untapped martial arts potential, as he's trained by masters played by Ahn Sung-ki and Yoon So-yi.

Part modern-day wuxia, part superhero film and part local comedy, it was Ryoo Seung-wan's first foray into commercial cinema, and the film was a relative box office success at around 2 million tickets sold.

It also established Ryoo's star charisma and his natural affinity for comedy.

Ryoo then starred in Kim Sung-su's online short Back (streamed on Daum in October 2004).

Set in a dystopia where everyone literally moves backward, his character sparks a revolution and becomes hunted by the authorities by daring to move forward.

Though Ryoo had been steadily impressing critics and audiences since his debut, it was Crying Fist in 2005 that would change his career.

Considered a showcase for the talents of the Ryoo brothers, the movie is a real-life-inspired story of two boxers, showing their journeys in a parallel narrative structure: one is a hardened teenage criminal who takes up boxing in reform school, the other a retired boxer in his forties earning his keep as a "human punching bag" who returns to the ring partly to redeem himself in the eyes of his son and wife.