SEOUL - Popular South Korean actor Gong Yoo has celebrated his 20th anniversary in show business by opening his first social media account.
On Wednesday (Dec 1), his management agency said in a statement: "We opened an official Instagram account to convey the daily life of the actor Gong Yoo to all his fans."
The first post was an uncaptioned photo of a plate of delicious-looking squid. This was most likely alluding to Gong's cameo in the hit Netflix series Squid Game, about a group of desperadoes playing deadly versions of childhood games.
His brief appearances as the face-slapping salesman catapulted the already popular actor to international fame and spawned many hilarious memes.
In his second post, the 42-year-old showed off his back view in a basketball jersey with "Gong" on it.
His agency said it was managing the account @_gongyoo_official_ on the actor's behalf and stressed that he has no other social media accounts.
The star of hit fantasy K-drama Goblin (2016 to 2017) and zombie thriller Train To Busan (2016) had previously explained why he was not on Instagram.
"I don't like taking selfies. When I go somewhere, I'd rather be looking at the sights with my eyes rather than take pictures," he had said at a press conference in April 2017.
"Part of the reason why I don't use social media is that because it's to show people, some parts of it will not be genuine. It makes me uncomfortable to show things in a packaged way like that."
Meanwhile, the global phenomenon of Squid Game showed no sign of abating as it won its first major American award at the 2021 Gotham Awards for independent films.
On Monday (Nov 29), it took home the trophy for Breakthrough Series - Long Format in New York.
Its creator and director Hwang Dong-hyuk said in his acceptance speech: "When I wrote this script, it was 2009, 12 years ago. I did my best, but nobody liked it. People said it's unrealistic, it's too violent, it's absurd, it's weird.
"It took 12 years to make this show and show it to the people. And it took less than 12 days to become the No. 1 show on the planet."
