Fresh out of the military, the "Exhuma" star is set for a reunion with the actor he grew up admiring Lee Do-hyun (YH Entertainment) Lee Do-hyun has picked his next fight, and it's a big one.On Monday, production house Hive Media Corp. confirmed that the 31-year-old will star in "Nambeol," a hard-boiled martial arts epic set in the early Joseon era about a group of warriors sailing to a remote island to rescue captives taken by Japanese pirates.Lee will play the expedition's frontline commander and right hand to the warrior chief played by Lee Byung-hun, with "Alchemy of Souls" star Go Youn-jung rounding out the top of the bill. It's his second feature after 2024's occult megahit "Exhuma," and comes a little over a year after he was discharged from the Air Force in May 2025.Korea has never lacked for photogenic leading young men. What it does lack is the ones who make it past the rom-com heartthrob stage and into more serious work. Lee is well on his way to joining that club, having hopscotched from monster horror to period melodrama to revenge thriller without a dud in the pile. Little wonder the offers came flooding as soon as he took the uniform off.Hoop dreams, rewiredBorn in Seoul in 1995, Lee was a serious basketball player through middle school. That changed when he came across "Sunflower," a 2006 gangster picture starring Kim Rae-won, and he's been set on acting ever since.When his dad pushed back, Lee went around him and persuaded his mom, who took on extra work to pay for his acting lessons. It took two tries before he got into the prestigious theater and film department at Chung-Ang University.Money was tight back then. Lee pitched in through high school with part-time work, delivering newspapers alongside his mom and picking up shifts at restaurants.He has always spoken warmly about his family, especially his younger brother, who has a developmental disability — a fact that came to light when Lee mentioned it in his acceptance speech for a top acting prize at the 2021 KBS Drama Awards. Lee Do-hyun delivers his acceptance speech at the 2021 KBS Drama Awards, as shown on tvN's "You Quiz on the Block" in 2023. (tvN) Seeing his brother, the actor has said, is what keeps his acting honest. "My brother is an innocent kid who can't lie at all, so when I'm with him, all my pretenses just fall away," he said on tvN's "You Quiz on the Block" in 2023.The hot streakLee debuted in 2017 with a bit part in the hit prison dramedy "Prison Playbook." He had a breakout role two years later in "Hotel del Luna" as a doomed royal guard from Korea's ancient past, holding his own opposite K-pop superstar IU."Sweet Home," Netflix's 2020 monster-apocalypse hit, introduced him to viewers beyond Korea as a med student turned reluctant leader of survivors barricaded in their crumbling apartment block. Along the way came his first lead role in the body-swap comedy "18 Again," the acclaimed crime thriller "Beyond Evil" and the period romance "Youth of May," which won him a top excellence award at the 2021 KBS Drama Awards. Lee Do-hyun (center) stars in "Sweet Home" (Netflix) Then came the big one: As a soft-spoken surgeon aiding Song Hye-kyo's revenge crusade in the 2022-23 Netflix phenomenon "The Glory," Lee exploded into global fame. But for all its success, he came away unconvinced by his own performance, finding it hard to even watch himself on-screen."Honestly, rewatching 'The Glory' was hard," he told Esquire Korea in 2023. "The show itself was nearly flawless, but every time Yeo-jeong came on, all I saw was what I'd gotten wrong. People kept saying I did well. I didn't get what they saw." Lee Do-hyun stars in "The Glory" (Netflix) Whatever doubts remained about his capacity for heavier material, "Exhuma" settled them. The 2024 supernatural thriller cast him as a young shaman working alongside veterans Choi Min-sik and Kim Go-eun — about the best situation an actor could ask for. The film became a genuine cultural event that year and won Lee best new actor in film at the Baeksang Arts Awards. Lee Do-hyun stars in "Exhuma" (Showbox) What sets Lee apart from his peers is a range that runs in both directions. He can carry the dread of a monster apocalypse and, in the next project, the fizz of a body-swap comedy, and he does it all at a conspicuously low volume. His is a screen presence built on stillness, told through the deep-set gaze matched with a bass-register voice and clean diction that leave as much said as unsaid.That composure is a product of training, by his own account. Lee has spoken about honing his voice and delivery over the years, starting in his second year of high school when he ran diction drills with a cork clenched between his teeth.Which brings us to his professed idol: Lee Byung-hun, whom the actor has cited as his role model since early in his career. It's not hard to see what he's drawn to — the elder Lee has long made an art of restraint, letting stillness carry the scene. The two will share the screen in "Nambeol," playing, fittingly, a chief and his loyal deputy.The open romance Lee Do-hyun (right) and Lim Ji-yeon discuss a scene on the set of "The Glory" in 2022. (Netflix) Then there's the part of his life Lee has never bothered to hide. He and actor Lim Ji-yeon met making "The Glory" — she played the villain his character helps take down — and confirmed their relationship in April 2023 after the news broke.In an industry where stars typically keep things under wraps, the two have never played coy, often getting spotted out together without fuss. At the 2024 Baeksang Awards ceremony, accepting his best new actor prize for "Exhuma" in military uniform, Lee thanked his girlfriend by name from the stage, sending the crowd into a collective swoon.Three years in, the couple is still going strong.