Ahn Hyo-seop's five best roles ranked, from Lovers of the Red Sky to Business Proposal

02Just outside the list, and number five

Just outside our list sits Abyss, on tvN in 2019, where he plays a man who comes back from death with a completely different face.

Number five is Ha Ram in Lovers of the Red Sky, on SBS in 2021. Ha Ram is a blind man who reads the stars, and since childhood his body has carried a demon king. The drama is a period piece, a fantasy and a love story all at once, with Kim You-jung opposite him.

Think about what that asks of an actor: playing a man who cannot see, while a second presence lives inside his body. The role showed his range. What it did not do yet was change how audiences saw him, and that is why it sits at number five.

03Number four: one face, two hearts

A Time Called You is a Netflix series from 2023. A grieving woman travels back to 1998 and meets a man who looks exactly like the one she lost. Ahn Hyo-seop plays both men, Koo Yeon-jun and Nam Si-heon.

With the same face on screen, the difference between the two had to live in the way he moved and spoke. That is a quiet kind of challenge, and it changed something for him: it showed he could carry a mystery, not only a romance.

04Number three: the young surgeon audiences took seriously

Number three is Seo Woo-jin in Doctor Romantic 2, on SBS in 2020. He was not new to awards by then. Two years earlier, he had already won Best New Actor at the 2018 SBS Drama Awards for Still 17.

This role was different. Woo-jin is a young surgeon in a medical drama that viewers already loved from its first season, so he was stepping into a story people already cared about. The part won him Best New Actor in television at the 56th Baeksang Arts Awards, and at the SBS Drama Awards that year he also took home an Excellence Award. In 2023, he came back as Woo-jin for a third season.

This is where Korean audiences first took him seriously as an actor. For many fans, it may be where they first noticed him too.

05Number two: quiet at home, loud everywhere else

His newest romance, Sold Out on You, aired on SBS in 2026. He plays Matthew Lee, a perfectionist young farmer who makes natural cosmetics, and Chae Won-bin plays Dam Ye-jin, a home shopping host.

In Korea, the ratings stayed modest, between two and three percent. On Netflix, something else happened. In its first week, it went to number one on the global chart for non-English TV, with 4.7 million views. It reached the top ten in 42 countries and regions, and it stayed in Netflix's global top ten for non-English TV for its whole two-month run.

Quiet at home, loud everywhere else.

That gap is the reason for its place on this list. It proved that his name alone could carry a show around the world.

06Number one: the office romance that led to Jinu

Our number one is Kang Tae-mu in Business Proposal, on SBS and Netflix in 2022. Tae-mu is a young CEO whose blind date turns out to be one of his own employees in disguise. If you have seen it, that setup probably still makes you smile. Kim Se-jeong played opposite him, and the pair won Best Couple at the SBS Drama Awards. Seol In-ah, now the lead of Love in Disguise, was in the cast too.

But the real reason it ranks first came years later. He has said that his English-language acting in Business Proposal helped him win the role of Jinu, who leads the Saja Boys, the rival boy band in KPop Demon Hunters. In September 2025, Netflix said the film had reached 314.2 million views. It was the first title on Netflix to pass 300 million.

So the trainee who never debuted became the voice of the most famous idol on Netflix.

Some dreams don't disappear; they just take the long way around.

07A first chef role in Final Table

Which brings us back to Final Table. He plays Kang Han, a Korean chef who has worked overseas and moves to a new restaurant every year. Then a visit to Familia, a small Italian restaurant tied to his father's memories, makes him its head chef. He also enters The Table: K-Chef 2026, a survival contest to find the best Korean chef in the world.

It is his first chef role, after historical dramas, romances and animation. Hong Hwa-yeon plays opposite him, on JTBC every Saturday and Sunday. Its first episode drew 1.9 percent nationwide, so the real test is still ahead. What we are hoping for is a quieter, more personal side of him.

Our number one stays Business Proposal, because it opened the door to Jinu. Which Ahn Hyo-seop role is your number one, and why did it stay with you?