Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3811
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Lee Sung-min works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Lee Sung-min appears in 18 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Lee. No Other Choice is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, crime, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Park Chan-wook, Lee Won-tae, Kim Yong-hwa and others, Lee Sung-min helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
No Other Choice (2025) as Gu Bum-mo · 12.12: The Day (2023) as Jung Sang-ho · Remember (2022) as Pil-ju
Career snapshot
Ranked #3811 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
18
2018–2025
Career length
7 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
No Other Choice
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
10.0
Miniforce: Raid of Hamburger Monsters
Most frequent director
Woo Min-ho
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Woo Min-ho
Most common genre
Drama
10 titles
Average runtime
2h 1m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.3
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2020s
6.7 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. No Other Choice, Handsome Guys, 12.12: The Day — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.7
Across 13 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Beast, Hit-and-Run Squad, Black Money.
Most productive era
2020s
13 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.63 films | 6.77 films |
| Action | 6.53 films | 6.75 films |
| Thriller | 6.73 films | 6.86 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.83 films |
| Crime | 6.54 films | 6.93 films |
| Horror | — | 6.42 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Ri Myeong-woon.
Career peak
2022Remember
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance · Most recent film
2025No Other Choice
7.4 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. The current state of the argument, as Gu Bum-mo.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
18 of 18 films
as Gu Bum-mo
Directed by Park Chan-wook
as Jung Sang-ho
Directed by Unknown
as Pil-ju
Directed by Lee Il-hyung
as Joo Tae-ju
Directed by Kim Tae-yun
as Ri Myeong-woon
Directed by Yoon Jong-bin
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Gu Bum-mo
No Other Choice (2025)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Gu Bum-mo gives Lee Sung-min a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Jung Sang-ho
12.12: The Day (2023)
Performance score7.5
12.12: The Day asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jung Sang-ho is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Pil-ju
Remember (2022)
Performance score7.5
Remember asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pil-ju is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Joo Tae-ju
Mr. Zoo: The Missing VIP (2020)
Performance score7.3
Mr. Zoo: The Missing VIP asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Joo Tae-ju is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Gu Bum-mo
Start here. No Other Choice is the clearest statement of what Lee Sung-min does — accessible, 139 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Lee at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
The Spy Gone North (2018)
Keeps the thriller register of No Other Choice but asks for a colder reading of it.
Mr. Zoo: The Missing VIP (2020)
A deliberate change of key after The Spy Gone North — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Remember (2022)
Keeps the action register of Mr. Zoo: The Missing VIP but asks for a colder reading of it.
12.12: The Day (2023)
Keeps the action register of Remember but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Woo Min-ho
Director
2 films together
Notably The Man Standing Next
Yoon Jong-bin
Director
1 film together
Notably The Spy Gone North
Han Jun-hee
Director
1 film together
Notably Hit-and-Run Squad
Lee Jung-ho
Director
1 film together
Notably The Beast
Kim Tae-yun
Director
1 film together
Notably Mr. Zoo: The Missing VIP
Lee Jang-hoon
Director
1 film together
Notably Miracle: Letters to the President
Lee Il-hyung
Director
1 film together
Notably Remember
Lee Jung-jae
Director
1 film together
Notably Hunt
Kim Yong-hwa
Director
1 film together
Notably The Moon
Lee Won-tae
Director
1 film together
Notably The Devil's Deal
Park Chan-wook
Director
1 film together
Notably No Other Choice
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Woo Min-ho
Director
2 films together · 6.6 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Man Standing NextPark Chan-wook
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
No Other ChoiceLee Il-hyung
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
RememberYoon Jong-bin
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Spy Gone NorthLee Jang-hoon
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Miracle: Letters to the PresidentHan Jun-hee
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hit-and-Run SquadLee Jung-jae
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HuntKim Tae-yun
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mr. Zoo: The Missing VIPKim Yong-hwa
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The MoonLee Jung-ho
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The BeastLee Won-tae
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Devil's DealSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
No Other Choice
as Gu Bum-mo
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Spy Gone North
as Ri Myeong-woon
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
No Other Choice
as Gu Bum-mo
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Hostage: Missing Celebrity
as Self (cameo)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
No Other Choice
as Gu Bum-mo
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Lee Sung-min has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Drama Legend
Awarded
10 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
No Other Choice
as Gu Bum-mo
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
No Other Choice
as Gu Bum-mo
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Spy Gone North
as Ri Myeong-woon
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The 8th Night
as Park Jin-soo / Seon Hwa
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Remember
as Pil-ju
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Beast
as Jung Han-su
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Black Money
as Prosecutor General
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Devil's Deal
as Kwon Soon-tae
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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