Supernova Hoyeon Jung, Star of 'Squid Game' Covers Vogue US February 2022 by Harley Weir

South Korean model turned actor Hoyeon Jung covers the February 2022 issue of American Vogue. In her role of north Korean defector in the Netflix hit ‘Squid Game’, the 27-year-old is part of an established cast of South Korean actors who comprise Netflix’s most-viewed series ever.

Louis Vuitton’s newest Global House Ambassador for fashion, watches and jewelry wears a Vuitton cape and dress on her Vogue cover, accented with Alexander McQueen earrings. Alex Harrington styles the fashion story ‘From Squid Game to Supernova: Inside the Whirlwind with Hoyeon Jung’ with gorgeous elegance from Acne Studios, Givenchy, Junya Watanabe, Loewe, Miu Miu, more Louis Vuutton, Prada, Stella McCartney, Vera Wang and more. Harley Weir [IG] is behind the lens / Hair by Holli Smith; makeup by Thomas de Kluyver for Gucci Beauty.

Vogue’s Monica Kim catches up with Hoyeon Jung at New York’s Soho Grand.

Paragraphs are spent talking about the star’s low self-esteem — probably the most common thread of discussion among women talents these days. Five decades later from the second wave of feminism — with a third wave thrown in to fix all the failings of the second wavers — well, women’s struggles with self-esteem remain front and center.

Without brushing off the self-esteem struggles that affect women deeply, AOC refuses to dwell on them in such a fabulous story about the success of this super-talented young woman Hoyeon Jung.

It was during her first Fashion Week in Paris, in 2016, that she caught the eye of Nicolas Ghesquière, Louis Vuitton artistic director of women’s collections. “I remember the first thing that struck me was her smile,” he tells me over the phone from L.A. “I remember she had flamboyant red hair, of course a gorgeous silhouette, and such an elegant way of moving. Off of the walk, we already knew she was in—as we say.”

Stylist Aeri Yun plays a pivotal role in the story — and so does New York City, a sentiment so many of us understand.

It was here that she [Hoyeon Jung] began to find peace with the imperfections that had been picked apart by the public. “Growing up, I thought I had so many shortcomings, and I always thought that I had to fix them,” she says. “New York was the first place that told me that they were okay. I remember being so moved.”

The star’s love affair with New York provided its share of model-world challenges, and it’s here that Aeri Yun, stepped directly into her life. As Hoyeon Jung was no longer the “new girl’, she experienced fewer castings, fewer callbacks, fewer shows.

AOC can confirm this reality in our own archives as one year’s star model has almost no features the following year. Career trajectories are very precarious in fashion world, and few models of the moment do not internalize their own “failings” to explain their out-of-demand status.

Aeri Yun’s young son Phillip had a special, surrogate-family relationship with Hoyeon, and she became his caretaker, moving to Williamsburg, Brooklyn into a light-filled apartment next to Yun’s own home.

English, martial arts, yoga, acting classes defined the restless model’s time. Self-improvement dominated her consciousness. In January of 2020 — with COVID preparing its descent over New York — Hoyyeon Jung exchanged her Korean modeling agency for an acting agency. Providence was about to make her it’s daughter in a powerful way.

At the same time, in an unmarked production office in Hapjeong-dong, Seoul, Hwang Dong-hyuk was on edge. The 50-year-old South Korean writer-director, best known for his work in feature films, had spent more than three months casting for Squid Game, a battle royale–style TV thriller and passion project 10 years in the making, and still had not found anyone to play the lead female role of the “hard, cold, strong, but vulnerable” Kang Sae-byeok. “I was hoping for someone fresh, with a different aura,” Hwang says. “I was searching for a kind of actor I had never seen before.”

AOC fast-forwards over countless details in the emergence of a beautiful South Korean butterfly woman from her cocoon. In a must-read, inspiring Vogue interview about Hoyeon Jung, leave us now to go in-depth into the story.