Jae Hee began his acting career as a
child actor in the 1997
drama Mountain. He continued to appear on television, such as in the campus drama
School 2 and the family sitcom ''
Wuri's Family, as well as the 2000 horror film Bloody Beach''. In 2004, he was cast as the lead actor in
Kim Ki-duk's
3-Iron, playing a silent young man who breaks into vacant houses and while living there for a few days, he cleans the house and repairs broken gadgets during his stay. The
arthouse film won critical acclaim both locally and internationally. For his performance Jae Hee was named Best New Actor at the
Blue Dragon Film Awards. But Jae Hee's breakout role would come in 2005, when he played the playful but loyal Lee Mong-ryong in
Sassy Girl Chun-hyang, a modernized romantic comedy based on the well-known folktale
Chunhyangjeon. It became a huge hit not only in Korea, but throughout Asia, making him and co-star
Han Chae-young into
Korean Wave stars. He followed that with action comedy film
The Art of Fighting in 2006, in which he played a bullied high school kid who learns about martial arts and life from a wizened mentor (played by veteran actor
Baek Yoon-sik). Jae Hee returned to television, playing a chef in 2007's
Witch Yoo Hee (in which he reunited with
Chun-hyang director Jeon Ki-sang), and a surrogate father in 2008's
One Mom and Three Dads, but those series were less successful ratings-wise. On August 5, 2008, he enlisted for
mandatory military service. He was assigned to the Defense Media Agency until his discharge on June 18, 2010. For his first post-army project, Jae Hee was initially cast in
Bravo, My Love!, but had to drop out after he sustained a
back injury during
windsurfing practice for the role. Instead, he starred as the
chaebol heir of a cosmetics firm in cable romantic comedy
Color of Woman, which aired on
Channel A in 2011. Jae Hee played the
antagonist in
May Queen, a 2012 generational epic set against the backdrop of the shipbuilding industry in
Ulsan during Korea's modernization. He received an Excellence Award from the
MBC Drama Awards. In 2013, he joined
period drama Jang Ok-jung, Living by Love, a
revisionist take on the titular Jang, more infamously known as the
royal concubine Jang Hui-bin. Initially cast as Jang Ok-jung's first love, his screen time was drastically reduced. Later that year, his Chinese film
Crimes of Passion received a theater release three years after Jae Hee shot it in 2010. ==Other activities==