Do we like Lee Min-ho?
Our score: 7 out of 10. No harmful words or acts turned up and there's a long run of charity, but the record on his views is thin and a tax assessment he disputes is the one stain.
Lee Min-ho is one of Korea's biggest drama stars. He's spent years fighting the idea that he can only play the handsome lead. In a 2025 interview he said that in his twenties he “hardly got offers for diverse roles”, and he talked about how hard he resisted one big film part.
The story of the moment isn't really about him. Assassin(s), directed by Hur Jin-ho, imagines a version of the 1974 shooting of the first lady that differs from the official account. Lawmakers have called for a boycott, and a former People Power Party city councillor filed a police complaint alleging the director and production team committed criminal defamation. The production team rejects the claim, saying the film wasn't meant to distort history.
Lee has been caught in the blast radius. His Busan Film Festival talk was cancelled and he pulled out of the opening ceremony, and the distributor cited audience safety. Neither the festival nor his agency has said the controversy was the reason for the talk's cancellation, and his agency apologised to fans. Online critics have flooded cast members' accounts, and co-star Yoo Hae-jin has copped the worst of it. Taking a role in a contested historical film is a political risk. It isn't harm.
On the harm check, honestly, there's not much to find. We found no anti-LGBTQ+ comments, no culture-war grievance, no conspiracy posts and no campaigning of any kind from him. He's a Korean star who mostly keeps quiet and lets his agency speak. That's a clean result, but a thin one: silence tells us little about what he'd say if asked.
The one blemish is tax. Korean outlets reported that a special audit of him and his agency MYM in 2020 ended with additional tax and a fine. His side denied evasion and blamed a difference in interpretation of a damages payment and an accounting error in corporate expenses, and said the tax was paid. Other big names reportedly had similar assessments. It isn't a court finding.
The good stuff is the real stuff. In 2016 the Ministry of Health and Welfare gave him a Sharing Happiness Award for his charity work, including 100 million won for Nepal earthquake relief and the PROMIZ platform he founded in 2014. In 2020 he gave 50 million won through PROMIZ to child welfare groups. Co-star Yoo Hae-jin says “Lee Min-ho is really a good person.”