At age 21, she reinvented herself as an adult actor, winning the 1987 Best Actress at the Venice International Film Festival for her roles in The Surrogate Womb, directed by Im Kwon-taek. By doing so, she became the first Korean actor to win an acting prize at one of the world’s three most prestigious international film festivals — Cannes, Venice, and Berlin.
Two years later, she took the title role in director Im’s next feature Come, Come, Come Upward (1989) and received the Best Actress award at the Moscow International Film Festival.
In the 1990s, she starred in film hits The Road To Race Track (1991), Blue in You (1992), Go Alone Like Musso’s Horn (1995) and Girl’s Night Out (1998).
Kang’s TV appearances included the coming-of-age drama Diary of High School Student, which aired on KBS from 1983-1986, and the historical political drama Ladies of the Palace (2001) on SBS, in which Kang took the title role. The latter was one of the highest-rated TV series of that year.
