Singer-songwriter and actress, Jihae, was born in South Korea to a diplomat father and an opera-trained mother. A true renaissance woman with numerous artistic feats, Jihae grew up in Asia, Africa, Europe, and America attending ten schools in 3 different languages by the time she became a teenager. Jihae received a BA in Political Science from Emory University but didn’t follow in her father’s footsteps as she’d planned. Instead, in 2007, she launched a record label and released her first album, ‘My Heart Is An Elephant.’
In 2011, Jihae co-created, directed and produced a multimedia rock opera based on her 3rd LP, ‘Fire Burning Rain’ with Academy Award-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley (Moonstruck). Her 4th and latest LP, ‘Illusion of You’ features her co-write with the legendary Leonard Cohen and Dave Stewart on song, ‘It Just Feels’. ‘Illusion of You’ was lauded, “Beautiful, mystical and poetic” by the New York Times. The Wall Street Journal described it as “Downtown cool from Lou Reed to Deborah Harry to The Strokes all in one.”
In 2016, when a friend suggested that she audition for Ron Howard’s National Geographic miniseries Mars, Jihae soon found herself playing two identical twins in her first leading role — one the commander of the first human colony on Mars, the other, the Secretary General of Space Agency on earth. Mars returned for a second season last fall released in 171 countries.
For her second role, Peter Jackson cast Jihae in his epic big-budget Universal Pictures production Mortal Engines as heroine Anna Fang. Jackson tells Pop Inquirer, “Jihae has an elegance and a power that is exactly what Anna Fang needed to be. She’s a fantastic actor and she’s playing a character whose beliefs align with her own in some ways, so she’s able to play it with a lot of conviction and a lot of authenticity.”
Rolling Stone writes that Jihae is, “a musician with an illegal amount of screen presence and who, in a perfect non-dystopian world, would be cast in at least half of the movies coming out next year.” The Summer 2019 issue of V Magazine hails Jihae as “a real life superhero.”
Jihae has performed at the London Olympics, Cannes Film Festival and the United Nations General Assembly. Following her passion for human rights, she continues to donate her time and performance to a variety of nonprofits, including Hillary Clinton’s 2012 Hours Against Hate, the Willie Mae Rock Camp, and Acumen Funds. Jihae recently donated ‘Let’s Come Together’ song to International Medical Corps in an effort to help the dire tragedy faced by millions of migrants today.
Jihae is presently working on her 5th studio album set to be released fall of 2020. She also guest stars in Netflix’s Altered Carbon Season 2 (due out Jan 2020) performing a Cole Porter song and her LP title track, ‘Illusion of You.’