Hoyeon Rising

Hoyeon made the overnight leap from model to globally in-demand actor after her performance in Squid Game. Now, at a time when South Korea is minting some of the planet's biggest stars, she's working with some of the most celebrated auteurs in cinema, booking some of the most rarefied gigs in fashion, and after years spent bouncing around the world-beginning to wonder whether the best place to chase her future might just be back home in Seoul.

- YANG-YI GOH

THERE ARE MOMENTS lately when Hoyeon can see that things are changing, that life is hurtling off on a thrilling new vector that it may never be the same. This was the feeling that crept in, for instance, when she checked on her steadily exploding Instagram account to realize she had gained nearly 15 million followers in the preceding three weeks. At that precise moment, in the fall of 2021, Netflix's Squid Game was well on its way to becoming the streamer's most-watched series ever. And Hoyeon, the Korean show's breakout star-who then went by Jung Ho-Yeon-was undergoing the kind of transformative rush of instant fame that could only happen at this strange point in history. Before she landed Squid Game, the young model had never acted. Suddenly, she was a global megastar.

That sensation of change underfoot came again last summer, when she arrived at the North London set where the director Alfonso Cuarón was shooting Disclaimer, his forthcoming Apple TV+ series starring Cate Blanchett. Hoyeon had been cast in a crucial supporting role and would be shooting her first-ever scenes in English, a language she was still mastering. There was a lot to take in. They were shooting on a gargantuan soundstage with a hive of crew members bustling in every direction. All around her was intimidating evidence that she was now swimming in different waters, career-wise. But the thing that stood out to Hoyeon-that made her feel she'd taken a serious leap forward-was parked outside. "The trailers," she tells me. "In Korea, we don't have trailers. But in England and America, you guys have this kind of amazing system that gives actors more personal space to prepare."