Um Jung-ah (Yeom Jung-ah), born on July 28, 1972, in Seoul, is a South Korean actress. After placing as a finalist in the Miss Korea pageant in 1991 and finishing third in the Miss International pageant in 1992, she began her acting career in the early 1990s with the drama Our Paradise. She went on to star in numerous series, including The Sun and the Moon, Ambition, Model, School, Rising Sun, Rising Moon and Emperor Wang Gun.
At the same time, she made a name for herself in film thanks to movies such as Two Sisters (2003), The Big Swindle (2004), The Old Garden (2007) and Woochi, the Modern-Day Magician (2009). Her performance in The Big Swindle This earned her, among other honors, the Blue Dragon Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2004.
In the 2010s, she continued her television career with Royal Family (2011), My Love, Madame Butterfly (2012), Your Neighbor's Wife (2013) and Mirror of the Witch (2016). It has experienced a major resurgence in popularity with SKY Castle (2018–2019), in which she plays Han Seo-jin/Kwak Mi-hyang. This performance earned her the Best Actress award at the 2019 Baeksang Arts Awards.
She then appears in Snowdrop (2021–2022) before taking on the lead role of Eo Yong-mi in Cleaning Up (2022). In 2024, she played An Myeong-ja in the thriller No Way Out: The Roulette. The year 2025 is particularly important because it plays two very different main roles: Kim Se-hee, the leader of a criminal adoption ring in The Defects, followed by Lee Ji-an, a single mother and construction site supervisor in the family romantic comedy Love, Take Two.
On the big screen, she also stars in Smugglers (2023), Alienoid: Return to the Future and Mission: Cross (2024). In 2026, she reprised the role of Kang Mi-seon in Mission: Cross 2. His participation in Moving Season 2 has also been confirmed for 2026.
