Who is Lee Seung-gi? Everything You Need to Know

Quick Facts

More Facts

awards: 2010 · Brilliant Legacy - Baeksang Arts Award for Most Popular Male in Television
2007 · White Lie - Mnet Asian Music Award for Best Male Artist
2004 · Because You're My Woman - Mnet Asian Music Award for Best New Male Artist

2013 · Return - Mnet Asian Music Award for Best Vocal Performance - Male
2010; 2009 · Love Taught Me To Drink; Will You Marry Me - Golden Disc Award Song Division
2006 · Hard to Say - Mnet Asian Music Award for Best Ballad Performance

Recommended For You

Recommended Lists:

Tall Male Celebrities

Male Singers

Childhood & Early Life

Lee Seung-gi was born on January 10, 1987 in Seoul, South Korea. Although not much is known about his family background, it has been widely documented that he hails from a very rich South Korean business family. Lee has admitted that he never shared a warm relationship with his parents ever since he grew up.

Lee was a good student during his elementary and middle school days. He was an all rounder and performed equally well in sports, academics and arts and was the elected president of the student council during all his high school and middle school. In school, he became well-versed in English, Japanese and Korean. The fact that he learned all the three languages in his school itself, is a perfect testimony to how intelligent he was.

Lee loved music and arts since his early teenage years and spent hours listening to music. The band Maroon5 was highly successful in South Korea in those days, and it became an inspiration for Lee as well. He also played soccer for long hours. The balanced mixture of all aspects of his teenage hobbies made him a perfectionist in whatever thing he did, and it still continues to this day.

As for his education, after getting through with his high school education with flying colours, he started performing and became a successful musician, which somehow slowed down his education. But he knew its value and eventually did his studies in International Trade and Commerce from Dongguk University. He didn’t stop at that and went ahead with his education by pursuing post graduate studies in Trade Theory along with Finance and Cultural Contents at the Dongguk Graduate School.

Continue Reading Below

Recommended Lists:

Capricorn Actors

Capricorn Singers

Male K-pop Singers

Actors Who Are In Their 30s

Career

Lee started performing in theatres during high school and early college years due to his love of acting. He also expressed himself musically on stage and managed to get the attention of a very popular South Korean singer, Lee Sun-hee, and then received two years training in music from him before making his official debut.

He composed his first album ‘Dream of a Moth’ at the age of 17 and one song from the album became a mega success. The song ‘Because you’re my girl’ became a national rage. The song’s lyrics talked about a man and his love for older women, and this famously started a syndrome in South Korea. For the song, Lee won some of the major music awards in 2004. The Best Newcomer award at the Seoul Music Awards and M.net KM Music Festival were some of the prominent awards he won.

His next two albums also garnered a massive popularity among the listeners and he released a single in 2009 ‘Will you Marry Me’, which turned out to be another milestone in his career and he received honours at the Golden Disk Awards that year. The same year, he announced his next album titled ‘Shadow’, which became the most highly anticipated album of the year and managed to garner more than 40,000 pre-order copies.

Lee made his acting debut in 2005 with a guest appearance in the popular sitcom titled ‘Nonstop 5’. Thereafter, he appeared in a major role in the weekend drama series ‘The Infamous Chil Sisters’.

More praise for his acting chops came in 2009 with his role in the drama ‘Brilliant Legacy’, which placed Lee among the top actors in the country. The drama became a big success and as a result of this success, Lee received several acting offers along with increased endorsement deals. He also received ‘Excellence in Acting’ award at the SBS Drama Awards that same year.

His second ‘Excellence in Acting’ award came to him in 2010 for ‘My Girlfriend is a Nine-tailed Fox’, in which he played a university student who wanted to be a stuntman.

In 2012, Lee also eyed the international market for his music and released his album ‘Time for Love’. It was in Japanese language and Lee also released a single with the same title. It was highly loved by the Japanese and the album topped several music charts, including the biggest one - the Oricon Daily Charts. After this massive success, Lee organized a fan meet on a huge scale in Tokyo, which was attended by thousands of his Japanese fans.

He then appeared in the 2012 drama ‘The King 2 Hearts’ and the historical fantasy drama ‘Gu Family Book’.

In 2015, Lee made his film debut with ‘Love Forecast’, a romantic comedy. Ever since his TV and film career became a little steadily, his music career became little bit slower.

In 2007, Lee joined the cast of a famous variety show titled ‘1 Night 2 Days’, which happened to be a segment of the weekend variety show ‘Happy Sunday’ and with this project, Lee’s fame shot further. He became a household name in South Korea and in the neighbouring countries, where the South Korean variety shows have a massive market. For his hosting abilities, he won an award at the 2010 KBS Entertainment Awards and remained connected with the show until 2012.

In October 2009, he took on the job as a host for ‘Strong Heart’, the talk show and his own individual style of hosting hit the bull’s eye once again with the South Korean audiences and Lee received the ‘Netizen’s Popularity’ award at the 2009 SBS Entertainment Awards.

Recommended Lists:

South Korean Actors

South Korean Singers

South Korean K-Pop Singers

South Korean Film & Theater Personalities

Personal Life

Despite his flamboyant persona on screen, Lee Seung-gi is known to have quite a clean and ‘good guy’ image in real life. He says that he doesn’t like to drink out and party like others. He doesn’t find any taste for that life.

Lee says that he has never taken drugs his entire life and doesn’t think that creativity requires an outside stimulation.

Singer Yoona and Lee dated for quite some time and confirmed their official relationship status in January 2014, but their separate busy schedules made it very hard for the relationship to work out and as expected, it ended in 2015 with both the stars claiming that they will remain good friends.

Recommended Lists:

Capricorn Men

Lee Seung-gi Biography