Casting Director Soonyoung Han Makes her Mark with Samsung Ad Efforts

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – When Soonyoung Han arrived in the United States from her native South Korea five years ago, she knew entering the film and TV industry would be a challenge.

Having worked as a casting director back home would not guarantee she would be a success in the U.S. But just a few years after her arrival, she has found her niche with a string of successful ad campaigns where she provided the needed actors and models through her casting efforts. Most notable is the worldwide Samsung ad campaign begun last month for its Galaxy phone’s privacy capabilities.

“This is a global ad, so I cast different actors of different races for different roles. The story of this advertisement is especially interesting,” she recalled. “It is about several agents infiltrating to steal information from the main character's cell phone as in a spy drama.”

With the growing success of the campaign, Han has again joined with Samsung for its upcoming commercial campaign for the new version of the Galaxy phone arriving this year at retail stores worldwide.

The commercial is scheduled to be shot in Madrid, Spain with a number of notable actors, but Han is unable to give more details due to confidentiality agreements with the company.

“The most important thing is the actors' acting,” she said. “Because it is a story like a Marvel movie. Acting ability was a very important aspect of the shoot because you want the audience to connect with the characters and be engaged.”

With a growing list of film and commercial credits and projects over the years, Han credits her own persistence and her family’s support for much of her success.

“I have an older sister and younger brother so it was very happy childhood with my very wonderful mom and dad,” she said. “They were all very supportive and very encouraging from the beginning, so I’m very thankful to them.”

Having grown up in Sokcho City, located 93 miles east of Seoul, Han attended local schools before enrolling at the College of Beauty Arts in South Korea where she obtained a certificate in cosmetology. She would go on to attend the UCD International English Education Academy in Ireland to learn English.

After attending college in Ireland where she learned English, she returned to South Korea to work at a foreign modeling agency where she served as an English interpreter and model manager there. She would go on to establish her own casting agency in Seoul and worked with a number of top companies like Hyundai, Samsung and many others.

But she realized in order to find great success she would need to move to the U.S. where she could tap major talent as well as connect with top American brands.

“I was recruiting world-class people for global advertising in Korea,” she said. “But I decided to come to the United States because I thought it was my job to introduce Korean celebrities to the United States so that Koreans could be cast for global advertising projects in the United States someday.”

Today, through her firm Envy Artists Group, she is helping popularize K-pop, K-fashion and many top Korean artists and personalities through her work with major brands.