Kim Tae-hee was born on 29 March 1980 in Busan, South Korea. She is the second of three children. Kim has an older sister and a younger brother,Lee Wan, who is also an actor and appeared in her television series Stairway to Heaven. Kim moved to Ulsan as a child. She had an average of ‘100′ for all subjects throughout her three years in middle school. She enrolled at Ulsan Girls High School and moved to Seoul to attend university. In 2005, she graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in Fashion Design.
Iris (아이리스) is a South Korean espionage television drama series broadcast by KBS in 2009. With a budget in excess of 20 billion won (17 millionUSD), it, along with its spin-off Athena: Goddess of War, share the record for the most expensive Korean dramas ever produced.
Premiering in October 2009, the series was a critical and commercial success, with an average viewership of over 30% in addition to ranking as the top program consistently every week after its debut. The series also took home many of the highest honors at the 2009 KBS Drama Acting Awards, including Lee Byung-hun winning the top recognition, the Daesang Award. Among other nominations and recognitions, Lee and Kim Tae-heewere also named as one of the best on-screen couples.
The plot revolves around two friends from the 707th Special Mission Battalion recruited into a secret South Korean black ops agency known as the National Security Service. Of the pair, recruit Kim Hyun-jun begins to uncover evidence that his foggy past may not be so irrelevant to his joining of the secret organization after all. As the two friends find their loyalties tested and forge new, unlikely alliances, the journey takes them from their home country to Hungary, Japan, and China where they find themselves at the center of an international conspiracy.
The success of the series has led to a feature film, a 2010 spin-off, and a sequel series set to follow in 2012.
Lifelong friends Kim Hyun-Jun (Lee Byung-hun) and Jin Sa-woo (Jung Joon-ho), two Special Forces soldiers under the South Korean army's 707th Special Mission Battalion, each independently come into contact with an alluring woman by the name of Choi Seung-hee (Kim Tae-hee). The pair do not at first realize they have fallen for the same woman and continue to aim for her affections. Soon afterward, they are ushered from their military base to a secret compound in the middle of the night.
There, they are subjected to extensive torture as a means of gauging their worth under the most extreme of conditions. After successfully completing the test, Hyun-jun and Sa-woo are introduced to the standing head of the National Security Service, Baek San (Kim Yeong-cheol). He informs them that the NSS is a secret organization tasked with preempting foreign threats and protecting the country's interests through wetwork operationsincluding assassination of anyone who could be a threat to South Korean national security. Since its founding in 1976 during the rule of Park Chung-hee, the agency's very existence has remained a state secret from everyone, including the President.
Upon being initiated into the NSS, the pair learn individually that they had been headhunted by Seung-hee. Stirred by her deceit, Hyun-jun compliments her skills as an actress, while Sa-woo takes the news less bitterly. Still unaware that they share affection for the same woman, the two quickly prove themselves as capable agents within the NSS.
After taking on an unofficial assignment and foiling an assassination attempt on the leading presidential candidate, Hyun-jun and Sa-woo are invited to the Blue House. There, Hyun-jun experiences déjà vu, believing that he had stood in that very spot many years earlier.
Meanwhile, an elite assassin (T.O.P) appears at a high-rise hotel in Shanghai to eliminate a figure of political importance. After his bodyguards are disposed of, the man is killed and the assassin mentions his intention to move to the next and final target: Hong Seung-ryong, a defector from North Korea and the scientist heading their nuclear arms program.
As their personal relationships develop in unexpected ways, Hyun-jun, Sa-woo, and Seung-hee are soon sent to Budapest to secure Hong Seung-ryong while the Blue House decides whether to grant him asylum. Despite interference, they manage to deliver the defector to fellow agents tasked with escorting him to the South.
While their handover of Hong goes unheeded, a grand conspiracy begins to unravel at the hands of a far-reaching villain. As political tensions mount, Hyun-jun is given an independent assignment that will alter the course of history and change his life forever.
