Kakao Entertainment (Co-CEOs Ko Jung-hee and Jang Yoon-jung) celebrated a massive victory at the 62nd Baeksang Arts Awards held on the 8th, winning a total of six awards across the television, film, and theater categories.
The series ‘Eunjung and Sangyeon’ (written by Song Hye-jin and directed by Jo Young-min) proved its excellence by winning both Best Drama and Best Screenplay in the television category. With this win, Kakao Entertainment has secured both Best Drama and Best Screenplay for two consecutive years, following last year’s ‘When Life Gives You Tangerines’.
Upon receiving the Best Drama award, Director Jo Young-min shared, “I’ve been given a truly great award. I’m grateful to the writer for the wonderful script and the actors for their amazing performances. Although it wasn’t an easy project, I want to thank Netflix for choosing it and the Kakao Entertainment family for their unwavering support. Since this award was made possible by the staff who worked with me, I consider us to be receiving it together.” Jang Se-jung, head of the video business division at Kakao Entertainment, added, “I felt once again that making a great drama with great people is a wonderful thing. I’m grateful to the director for the most delicate, warm, and deep direction, and especially to actress Kim Go-eun for readily choosing this script. I hope that because there are viewers who love warm, understated stories, more stories like this can be created in the future.”
Screenwriter Song Hye-jin, who won Best Screenplay, expressed her gratitude, saying, “There were so many people I was thankful for while working on ‘Eunjung and Sangyeon,’ and I’m grateful for this opportunity to thank them. I want to thank the viewers, the director who turned a script with many nuances and difficult expressions into a beautiful drama, the wonderful actors, and all the staff. In the drama, Eunjung’s profession in her 30s is a planning producer, and I also have a producer I’ve worked with for over 10 years. I’m sharing this award with PD Choi Kyung-sook. Thank you.”
Actors under Kakao Entertainment’s subsidiaries also took home major awards. Yoo Hae-jin (VAST Entertainment) won the Grand Prize in the film category for ‘The Man Living with the King’. Hyun Bin (VAST Entertainment) won Best Actor in the television category for his impressive portrayal of desire for wealth and power in the Disney+ original series ‘Made in Korea’. Park Bo-young (BH Entertainment) won Best Actress in the television category for her sophisticated and multi-dimensional performance in the tvN drama ‘Unknown Seoul’, which was praised for vividly depicting different lives.
The play ‘Prima Facie’, planned and produced by Kakao Entertainment’s Show Note, also celebrated a win as actress Kim Shin-rok took home the Best Actress award in the theater category. In her acceptance speech, Kim Shin-rok stated, “I want to share this honor with Show Note, the creative team, and the fellow actors who made this work possible.”
Kakao Entertainment continues to gain popularity domestically and internationally this year with a diverse lineup including ‘Monthly Boyfriend’, ‘Shining’, and ‘The 21st Century Grand Prince’s Wife’. The company plans to release more well-made projects within the year, including the Netflix series ‘Wonderfuls’ (releasing on the 15th of this month), ‘The Boy in the Last Row’, ‘Field Mouse’, and the Netflix film ‘Cross 2’.
