Steven Yeun

Steven Yeun (born Yeun Sang-yeop, December 21, 1983) is a Korean-American actor.

Quotes

 * Here’s what an Asian person looks like to a majority white audience…But if you go to Korea, the characters are just humans because they’re not thinking about it like that. That’s something that I was made aware of [with Burning], which was really wonderful for me to know. I didn’t have to represent all Asians. I could just represent myself.
 * On the freedom of starring in a Korean film in “Burning actor Steven Yeun interview: 'I feel like a man with no country'” in Independent (2019 Jan 31)


 * These days I feel my otherness in every situation…If I go to Korea, there are reminders that I’m not fully Korean. I can speak it – and I look it there – but there are cultural and historical things that I don’t have because I wasn’t necessarily raised there. They really form the identity of being Korean and I’m missing parts of those…a man with no country…That’s the kind of place I’m operating from.
 * On feeling like the “other” in “Burning actor Steven Yeun interview: 'I feel like a man with no country'” in Independent (2019 Jan 31)


 * Let's not mess with your Americana that's kind of embedded into your body. The food that you've eaten, the choices that you've made, the way that you think - don't alter those things. Instead, just - let's work on the language so that you can be unequivocally Korean. But let's leave these mysterious Western encodings in your body alone. And I think that created its inherent kind of, like, dissonance with that character where you don't know who or what and where he's from.
 * On the instructions that he received for the film Burning in “Steven Yeun Won't Say Whether Or Not His 'Burning' Character Is A Psychopath” in NPR (2018 Nov 14)


 * You know, the concept of even an Asian-American person and a man has morphed and changed even in the last decade by a lot. You know, there's moments where people were super psyched that an Asian man was in a relationship with a white woman. And that was, like, a big point of victory for a moment…
 * On how the perception of Asian American men has changed in “Steven Yeun Won't Say Whether Or Not His 'Burning' Character Is A Psychopath” in NPR (2018 Nov 14)