No One Saw This Coming: Ha Ji Won Enrolls in College at 48 While Starring in Hit Drama

Ha Ji Won has done a lot of things in her nearly three decades in the Korean entertainment industry. She has played a legendary courtesan, an elite special agent, and a rom-com heroine so beloved that Secret Garden still tops rewatch lists more than a decade later. But her latest role might be her most unexpected yet: 2026 university freshman.

The 48-year-old actress — born Jeon Haelim in 1978 — recently enrolled at Kyung Hee University's College of Hotel and Tourism, joining the Culinary and Food Design department as part of the class of 2026. Her student ID card, made public through her new web series, quickly became a talking point online: where the form asks for a special skill, she wrote "fried egg."

A New Chapter in a 29-Year Career

Ha Ji Won made her debut in 1996, meaning she has now been in the industry longer than some of her university classmates have been alive. That gap has not made her nervous. Her recent social media presence suggests she is fully embracing life as a student, navigating campus like someone who belongs there.

The web series documenting her university life, titled 26th Intake, Ji Won Here and released on JTBC's YouTube channel every Thursday at 6 PM, has attracted a dedicated audience since its launch. Viewers have watched Ha Ji Won shop for ingredients at traditional markets, drop in on her mentor chef Yeo Gyeong-rae's restaurant, and navigate the social rhythms of campus life. In one episode, she was spotted alongside a handsome upperclassman, with fans immediately creating theories — though the content remained playfully ambiguous.

Ha Ji Won originally studied at Dankook University's acting department in the late 1990s, making this enrollment at Kyung Hee a return to student life in a completely different field. She is tackling the culinary arts not as a hobby, but as a genuine academic pursuit — kitchen assignments and all.

Three Screens, One Season

The university enrollment is only one thread in what is shaping up to be a remarkably full stretch for Ha Ji Won in 2026. Since mid-March, she has also been starring in ENA's Monday-Tuesday drama Climax, where she plays Chu Sang-a, a once-beloved top celebrity brought low by a tax evasion scandal.

The role is an interesting one. While the character navigates the wreckage of a public fall from grace, Ha Ji Won herself is generating the kind of attention associated with reinvention rather than controversy. On screen she shares chemistry with co-star Ju Ji-hoon, and early viewer responses have praised her ability to inhabit a morally complex character — neither fully sympathetic nor entirely unsympathetic — with confidence and control.

At the same time, her personal social media presence has been active and cheerful. On March 26, broadcaster Kang Nam posted a photo from a Japan trip featuring himself, his wife — Olympic speed skating champion Lee Sang-hwa — and Ha Ji Won. The group photo, which showed a relaxed and smiling Ha Ji Won flanked by the couple, quickly spread across Korean entertainment communities.

Why Her Story Is Resonating

Part of what makes Ha Ji Won's current moment compelling is how neatly it pushes back against the expectations typically placed on female celebrities of her generation. Korean entertainment has historically had a complicated relationship with aging actresses, with many seeing reduced visibility or narrower roles once they move past their thirties. Ha Ji Won has navigated that landscape differently.

Her career highlights are extensive. She delivered one of the defining performances of the 2000s period drama era in Hwang Jini (2006), a role that required both physical rigor and emotional depth. Secret Garden (2010), her romantic comedy with Hyun Bin, remains a touchstone for K-drama fans worldwide. She also starred in the action film The Berlin File (2013) alongside Ha Jung-woo and Ryoo Seung-bum, and headlined the sprawling historical epic Empress Ki (2013-2014), a role that ran for 51 episodes and kept her one of the most-watched actresses on Korean television for the better part of two years.

That she is now arriving on campus with a student ID listing fried egg as her special skill fits naturally into the public persona she has developed over the years: someone who commits fully to the work while remaining grounded about who she is outside of it. Her fanbase, which spans multiple generations, has responded to this latest chapter with something close to delight.

What Comes Next

With Climax airing weekly on ENA and her web series releasing episodes each Thursday, Ha Ji Won is currently one of the more consistently visible figures in Korean entertainment. Her culinary coursework at Kyung Hee appears to be genuine rather than a promotional exercise — multiple episodes of the web series have shown her in actual kitchen environments, consulting with professional chefs and working through the technical demands of serious food preparation.

Whether the Culinary and Food Design degree eventually leads somewhere concrete — a restaurant venture, a cooking-focused content series, or simply a deeper personal interest in food culture — remains to be seen. What is clear is that Ha Ji Won is not treating this as a leisure activity. She enrolled, she shows up, and she does the work. Given her track record over the past 29 years, that is probably all the indication anyone needs of how this chapter will unfold.

At 48, with a student ID in her wallet, a drama on cable television, and a circle of friends who take her to Japan without making it a headline, Ha Ji Won is offering Korean audiences something they seem to genuinely want: proof that there is no single script for how someone in this industry has to age — and that the most interesting chapters sometimes start exactly when conventional wisdom suggests they should stop.