lit a candle 5h ago24. I keep coming back to that number. Watched The Man from Nowhere years ago on a wet Sunday and never forgot her face in it, she held her own next to Won Bin and she was only a child doing it. Thinking of her sisters, A-ron and Ye-ron, tonight. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.
Their story
Kim Sae-ron (July 31, 2000 to February 16, 2025) was a South Korean actress who became one of the most acclaimed child performers of her generation. She began working as a child model in 2001 and made her acting debut at the age of eight in Ounie Lecomte's A Brand…
Kim Sae-ron (July 31, 2000 to February 16, 2025) was a South Korean actress who became one of the most acclaimed child performers of her generation. She began working as a child model in 2001 and made her acting debut at the age of eight in Ounie Lecomte's A Brand New Life (2009), a film loosely based on Lecomte's own childhood. Kim played Jin-hee, a nine-year-old girl left at an orphanage by her father, and when the film screened at the Cannes Film Festival she became the youngest actress ever invited to the festival.
A year later she co-starred with Won Bin in The Man from Nowhere (2010), the highest-grossing film in South Korea that year. Her performance as So-mi, the young neighbour the title character sets out to rescue, made her a household name. Her first two roles brought Best New Actress wins at the Korean Film Awards and the Buil Film Awards, and a Baeksang Arts Award nomination for The Man from Nowhere.
Through her early teens Kim moved easily between film and television. She played the younger version of Hwang Jung-eum's character in Listen to My Heart (2011), appeared with her younger sister Kim A-ron in Barbie (2012), which won Best Film at the Giffoni International Film Festival, and shared a Best Young Actress award at the 2013 MBC Drama Awards for The Queen's Classroom. In 2014 she returned to Cannes with A Girl at My Door, an Un Certain Regard selection in which she played a girl suffering bullying and abuse. Variety called her performance "mesmerizing", and she won Best New Actress at the Blue Dragon Film Awards. The same year she starred in the fantasy romance Hi! School: Love On and the thriller Manhole.
In 2015 she took the lead in the two-part Drama City special Snowy Road, playing a teenage "comfort woman" under Japanese colonial rule, a role that later earned her Best Actress in a Foreign Film at China's Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers festival. Her first adult lead came in the period drama Secret Healer (2016), and she signed with YG Entertainment that November. Later work included the thriller The Villagers (2018), the web drama Love Playlist (2019), the con-artist series Leverage (2019) and the web series The Great Shaman Ga Doo-shim (2021). In 2018 she was admitted to Chung-Ang University's Department of Performing Arts and Film Studies, and in January 2020 she joined the agency Gold Medalist.
On the morning of May 18, 2022, Kim crashed her car into a transformer, guard rails and street trees in Gangnam District, Seoul, while driving under the influence of alcohol. The collision cut power to 57 businesses for about three hours. She posted a handwritten apology the next day, withdrew from the SBS drama Trolley, and saw much of her role in the Netflix series Bloodhounds (2023) edited out. She was fined, and reports said her savings went on compensation and settlements, leaving her in debt and working part-time jobs. A planned stage comeback in the play Dong Chi Mee was announced in April 2024, but she withdrew a day later, citing poor health.
Away from the screen Kim volunteered from 2015 to 2023 with the Blue Angels, a group caring for shelter animals, and often used her Instagram account to encourage the adoption of abandoned dogs and cats.
Kim was found dead at her home in Seongsu-dong, Seongdong District, Seoul, on February 16, 2025. She was 24. Police ruled her death a suicide. A wake at Asan Medical Center drew many fellow actors, a private funeral followed on February 19, and she was laid to rest on February 21 at Utopia Memorial Park in Anseong. Her death prompted wide criticism in South Korea of relentless media coverage and online harassment of celebrities; around 2,000 news stories about her were published in the roughly 1,000 days between the crash and her death.
In the weeks after her death, claims by a YouTube channel about her past relationship with actor Kim Soo-hyun became a major public dispute between her family and his agency. In May 2026, Seoul Gangnam Police said that some of the evidence circulated by the channel had been fabricated with image editing and artificial intelligence, including an AI voice clone of Kim Sae-ron. Her final film, Guitar Man, was released in May 2025, and the long-delayed Day by Day (Urineun Maeil Maeil) was completed before her accident.
Kim Sae-ron is remembered as a gifted actress who carried serious, adult material with rare depth while still a child, and whose short life became a turning point in South Korea's conversation about how it treats its young stars.
If you or someone you know is struggling, please contact a local crisis line. In South Korea, call 109.
Biography adapted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Sae-ron; BBC News; Yonhap; Variety; The Hollywood Reporter; Korea Times.
In their own words
“I made a big mistake while drinking. I caused damage to so many people, including merchants, citizens, and those who restored it. I should have acted more carefully and responsibly, but I couldn't. I sincerely apologize.”
Handwritten apology posted to Instagram, May 19, 2022
“I am disappointed and very ashamed of the mistakes I have made.”
From the same apology, May 19, 2022
“Kim Sae-ron is deeply reflecting on her apparent mistake. The damage caused by the crash is being compensated as much as possible.”
Statement from her agency Gold Medalist, May 2022
Photos
1Kim Sae-ron in 2018
Oct 2018 · by People Forever
That film stayed with me too, she was something else in it