Ryu Da-in built her acting career the slow way. She started as a model, took a small supporting part in a 2020 teen fantasy drama, and only landed her first lead role four years later, in a psychological survival thriller called “Pyramid Game.” Born September 29, 2000, in Busan, South Korea, she is now 25 and about to turn 26, with three talent agencies and three very different genres already behind her.
She has also become one of 2025’s more talked-about K-drama girlfriends, after confirming a relationship with actor Lee Chae-min. That attention is real, but it tends to flatten a career that actually has more shape to it than most casual coverage suggests.
Who Is Ryu Da-in?
Ryu Da-in (류다인) is a South Korean actress and former model, currently signed with Alien Company. Some international databases, including IMDb, list her under the alternate romanization Ryu Da-Bin, though the birthdate and filmography match exactly, so it is the same person credited two different ways.
She was born in Busan and is an only child. Instead of finishing high school through a standard classroom track, she completed her education through South Korea’s General Educational Development exam, a route commonly chosen by young performers whose filming schedules do not leave room for regular attendance. Beyond that, she has kept her pre-industry life mostly private, and nothing further about her family background is publicly confirmed.
Modeling Before Acting
Before she ever stepped in front of a drama camera, Da-in worked as a model with YG Kplus, the modeling division connected to YG Entertainment. In South Korea, modeling agencies often double as a soft entry point into acting, giving young talent camera comfort, professional photos, and industry contacts before they ever read for a role.
That appears to be close to what happened here. Rather than debuting through an acting academy or a survival show, she moved from runway and print work into scripted television, a slower on-ramp than the one most rookie actresses take.
Her Acting Debut in 18 Again
Da-in’s first credited acting role came in 2020, in the JTBC drama “18 Again,” a Korean adaptation of the American film “17 Again.” She played a supporting character named Hwang Yeong-seon in a cast built around several young performers making their own early screen appearances.
The part was small, and it was never going to make her a household name on its own. What it did was answer a practical question for casting directors watching her: whether a model with no formal acting training could hold her own inside a real production. The show performed solidly for JTBC, and Da-in came out of it with actual set experience instead of a portfolio full of stills.
Crash Course in Romance and Her Own Turning Point
Three years after her debut, Da-in took the role of Jang Dan-ji in “Crash Course in Romance” (일타 스캔들), a 2023 tvN drama about the high-pressure world of competitive private tutoring in Seoul. The show became one of the year’s genuine hits, and in interviews around its release, Da-in has pointed to this specific project as the moment she decided she wanted acting to be her actual career rather than a detour from modeling.
It mattered for another reason too. On that set, she met actor Lee Chae-min, a co-star who would later become her real-life partner. For an actress still building her name, being part of a show people were actually watching, rather than a modest supporting production, changed the kind of attention her work started to draw.
Pyramid Game: Carrying a Drama for the First Time
In 2024, Da-in landed her first lead role, playing Myung Ja-eun in the TVING series “Pyramid Game,” based on the webtoon of the same name. The premise puts a high school class through a secret, recurring popularity ranking, where landing at the bottom does not just mean embarrassment; it means becoming the target of coordinated bullying from everyone above.
That is a considerable tonal jump from the lighter, romance-adjacent material she had done before. Instead of playing a supporting love interest, she had to sustain a character under sustained psychological pressure across an entire season, and by her own account, the added responsibility of leading a series pushed her further than any earlier role had. For viewers and casting directors watching her range on paper, it was the first real evidence that she could anchor a story rather than support someone else’s.
Three Agencies in Three Years
Da-in’s professional representation has moved more than is typical for an actress her age. She signed an exclusive contract with A Ground Entertainment in January 2023, moved to Andmarq Agency in August 2024, and then joined her current agency, Alien Company, in June 2025.
The timing is worth noting. The Andmarq move came right after her “Pyramid Game” breakout as a lead, and the Alien Company signing followed as her public profile widened further through her relationship with Lee Chae-min and continued casting interest. Frequent agency changes are common in the freelance-heavy contract culture of Korean entertainment, but this particular pattern reads less like instability and more like an actress and her team actively repositioning her as her market value shifted.
Her Relationship With Lee Chae-min
In March 2024, it was confirmed that Da-in is in a relationship with actor Lee Chae-min, her co-star from “Crash Course in Romance.” Neither has treated the relationship as something to hide. Fans spotted matching rings on both of them around the wrap party for Lee’s 2025 series “Bon Appétit, Your Majesty,” a show Da-in was not part of as a cast member, but that put her back in the headlines as his partner.
That attention has come with a cost to how she gets covered. Several entertainment outlets now introduce her primarily as “Lee Chae-min’s girlfriend” before mentioning any of her own credits. It is an understandable shorthand given how much traffic celebrity-couple stories draw, but it undersells an actress who moved from teen fantasy to competitive drama to psychological thriller in four years, entirely on her own casting merits.
What Is Actually Confirmed, and What Isn’t
Because Da-in is still relatively early in her career, some of the numbers people search for around her name simply are not public yet. Her net worth has not been disclosed by any official or reliable source, and no major domestic acting awards or nominations have been confirmed for her at this point. Both are reasonable gaps for someone five years into a screen career built on steady supporting and mid-tier lead work rather than a single breakout hit.
What is documented is more useful anyway. She stands at roughly 170 centimeters according to widely repeated profile figures, though this has not been officially verified by her agency. Her filmography, agency history, and the timeline of her relationship are all matters of public record, drawn from her own interviews, agency announcements, and consistent reporting across Korean entertainment outlets.
What Comes Next for Ryu Da-in
Da-in’s next confirmed project is “Excitation,” in which she is set to play a character named Kim Ye-jin. Available reporting places the project around 2027, and plot details beyond the casting itself have not been widely confirmed, so anything more specific would be speculation.
She enters her mid-twenties, turning 26 later this month, with her third talent agency in three years and a filmography that has moved from a small supporting role to carrying her own series. The romance with Lee Chae-min will likely keep pulling in readers who found her name through his projects first. But the more durable story, and the one her own interviews keep pointing back to, is a model who decided, one role at a time, to become an actress people watch for her own work.
