Good for her. I hope she achieves success in the States, and make a huge acting comeback.

Good for her! She can always come back to acting after school.

I really admired her performance when I first saw her int Hwan Jini the drama series. I enjoyed all the roles she acted in. She has a stage presence...a natural talent. I will certainly miss her. I wish her all the best & I hope that when she comes back to entertain us with her superb talent she would be a strong mature person to withstand the pressures of the show biz industry.

I don't know her, but I think she made a great decision.

It's kind of like with Natalie Portman, and how she decides to go study and get an education even though numerous of producers want her. And now, she's famous.

I hope Eun-kyung will make a great comeback in the future. :D
If she's a great actor, she has nothing to fear. xD

She's gonna be so bored in school! There were a few transfer students from Korea in my high school and they thought it was funny how easy our school was. :P And we always made the list of top 100 public schools in the country so...yeah.

Wasn't she pretty much the star of "My Dad Loves Trouble?"
That's the only drama that I've seen her in, but she's very talented.

Pittsburgh?
I betcha' her high school is connected to the Carnagie-Mellon University
College of Fine Arts, one of the best in the US, for the performing arts.

I hope that she doesn't meet ~ a herd ~ of crazy Korean TV drama fans.
On second thought, I hope she does. :)
WISHING ALL THE BEST OF GOOD LUCK TO HER iN THE FUTURE!

*

Wow. It's impressive that she's only 15, yet she's so clear about what she wants at the moment and how to get there.

This is probably one of the most mature things I have ever heard a child actor/actress say. Most of the forget that they are just kids and try and ride the success until they end up burning out. Look to Macauley Culkin - prime example.

I totally agree with #5 - she's only 15 and already making the decision to concentrate on her studies. Usually you'd hear about actors going to college as a break from acting, so to see her seriously pursue her studies in the states for high school is impressive.

Yes, it's refreshing to hear a 15-year-old taking her education very seriously. I hope she's successful and comes away happy with her decision to attend an American school.

wow she's only 15 and already chose education over fame...that's impressive. I honestly haven't seen her any dramas but i think she made a great decision...despite the industry's loss. I makes me sad to see so many stars, mainly the idols, who train so young and don't get the full education experience because of their schedules. Hopefully she'll come back and be even more successful :D

I respect her decision. Besides, immersing herself in an English speaking country will only improve her language skills and open more prospects for her in the future.

Loved her as young Sujini in Legend. In all honesty, I never got into MGY as Korea's Little Sister but with Shim Eun-Kyung, I could see myself being her devoted fan and unnie.

kyaaaaaaa! no matter how few koreans there are in pittsburgh there will DEFINITELY be plenty that recognize her. so excited for her!! i hope it's an awesome experience that she can use to make a kick-ass comeback some day.

she's the bad sister in women in the sun hehehe. good luck in ur studies!

I'm glad she decided to pursue her academics, and its brave of her to study half-way around the world. I'm sure when she gets back to Korea, she'll be a more mature and excellent actress after studying in Pittsburgh.

she has been gold in every role she's played. (@JJ thanks for the reminder about Women in the Sun ~~ never has a child been so wonderfully evil.) we will miss her and await her return, whether in korean or english-speaking drama. ^^

I know I wasn't that mature when I was her age. My sister is in Pittsburgh! I wonder why of all places she picked Pittsburgh... Anyways, looks like she doesn't have just air in between her ears- which is a nice change from the other kids her age. :)

She's wonderful to watch and is amazingly talented. But while it's Kdrama industry's loss, I understand and appreciate her decision to study abroad in the US. But I hope that maybe she will return to acting in the future after getting her education, because she will be missed.

Even school in America is a walk in the park compared with Korean high-schools...breaking the barriers of a new language and alphabet will be tough....but...if she would speak english very well there won't be problems with her to act in a Hollywood production
meetings with hoards of fans ...errrm after a few months they all will let her walk in peace...and non asian people without a proper trainig(lots of kdramas)we can hardly differentiate one asian between another (I have chinese workers in my town..and I can't tell the difference)

errrm I still hate that are many kstars without english official site but they have official fan cafe or site in korean(google translate doesn't help)...and if she comes back in kdramas...she will have many pluses just because can speak english very well

congratulations for pursuing the academic path(hope she will go to college too)

Wow. The drama trope of going to the US to study to get away from it all actually happening in real life! Good luck to her, & may her horizons be broadened in a good way.

Considering she'll be avoiding places where there are many Koreans, it'll help keep herself as a normal student, while improving her English ten-fold. So many Koreans go to the school I'm at and cluster together, speaking Korean, and limiting their attempt at really learning the language. This will put her ahead of the game if she decides to come back to the industry, or get her along towards higher education later on. Either way, certainly a great desicion she made.

I adore Shim Eun Kyung, so it's a shame we won't get to watch her acting anymore (at least for a couple of years). On the other hand, I'm happy to see her put her education first, in an industry where you see so many young people dropping their studies because their careers take too much of their time.

Being steeped in a different culture and picking up English properly would be good for her, too. Hope she comes back in a few years and stuns us all again :D

Kudos to her for putting her education and well being ahead of fame and fortune. Like she stated, I'm sure starting in the entertainment industry at such a young age can bear such great burden on a person mentally and physically. although, she might be missing the opportunity to be the next "korea's sister" it's really commendable of her for wanting to continue with her education and put acting in the backseat. from personal experience, it's much harder trying to get back into school when your older. learning and studying is so much easier when you have a young brain.

Since she is coming to the US so late in age, her English will not be good as some have stated. I have heard students from Korea speak after being here for only a year to learn English and it is not so good.

Yet, this child is a gifted actress so I wish her the best in her endeavors.

I'm impressed by her maturity and I wish her the best!

All the more respect for her and for such a mature decision. I sincerely hope she will be coming back to make movies/dramas in the future. I'm so going to miss her sassy characters.

@Jasmin she's young
@song4u2 do you think if she would learn english at 24 would be better?I bet it won't...and high school as I remember is 4 years...and depends a lot about the pupil's talents and hobbies.... I'm a non talent at foreign languages...if you have a death wish.just listen my english...but my sister speaks it very well...and we live in Eastern Europe

As a side note: Rachel Park went to high school in Pittsburgh. You might know her as Park Min Young.

Saddened to hear this frankly, given her incredible, incredible gifts as an actor. Shim Eun Kyung just completed her run on Merchant Kim Man-deok, and she showed the same depth and presence as in Kyung Sook's Father.

She'll also be 16 years old and presumably a junior in high school. Could be rough. Hopefully she doesn't meet Ben Rothlisberger . . .

Wow. Love how she plans her future at such a young age. Cause I mean, with her studies (if she finishes her degree later), she would be able to branch out into other things like management or idk (lol..i'm thinking too far ahead)

But i admire her for her wisdom. Now...what was I doing when I was 15...

i loved her in hansel and gretel :)

@belleza

16 in Korean years or Western years though? If it'd be 16 years Western, I'd say she'd find herself a freshman or a sophmore unless she tests out of various classes. Granted, it does depend on Penn's laws for age in the school systems.

"If it’d be 16 years Western, I’d say she’d find herself a freshman or a sophmore unless she tests out of various classes."

She'll be 16 years old Western when she enters school in the fall. Which is the problem. It would be unrealistic as a junior for her to acclimate to a student body where everybody is thinking university applications, prom, etc. It will be a little humiliating if she enters as a freshman, though she may not know that,.

Most people I knew who entered States from Taiwan or Korea did the transition during junior high or freshman year. It's ROUGH making that change during the middle of high school. It's rough anyway. Years of ESL. Loneliness, homesickness. There's Korean restaurants in Pitt, but you have to go out of your ways.

Honestly wouldn't be surprised if this was the wish of her parents.

Having said that, I'd also assume she has relatives in Pitt, and she's probably visited the States at some point.

its better to have knowledge of other things in life, other then acting, because with all the tallent in the world... being famous its not permanently... the fans maybe won't forget their idol...but the general public it does...and going into oblivion....means, almost all the times poverty, so an actress without a good education and poor doesn't have a chance, but a well trained and educated one....even she doesn't find a job as a actress...she will do something else....
beside that being a hallyu star its quite stressfull(some of them become suicidal)...they work sometime even 18 hours a day...and I bet her parents don't want this kind of life for their daughter...
we all know celebrieties that changed the job that made them famous just to be a normal person

she is one of promising child actor. I like her character in Hansel and Gratel. during the ends when she turn her faced to old, scary .. yet she still can play the character well. i hope she will come time to time in screen .. ^^

Personally I find that's a very wise decision ^^ Although I've been impressed at her performances so far ( Have to admit that I even watched every single project she acted in), as Leona said, acting may be a wonderful job, but it's better to have other experiences. At least the day she decides to stop acting - if she ever does - she will be able to do other things however less glamorous they may seem. Life isn't a straight road for most of us, multiplying experiences and meeting people from other places where popularity and beauty doesn't weight anything will broaden her horizons.

I still hope that she'll be back though. Not sure though... Anonymity is certainly preferable to seeing your picture on every magazine...
Laure Manaudou, our French swim-superstar also decided to take a break from swimming and the media... and decided that anonymity was way better after all >_<

she made the right choice. seeing actors and actresses are doing suicide because of the entertainment industry right now getting away from it to relieve stress is a good and better idea!!! hope 2 see her soon in future projects!!! :D

Such a sensible young girl, good for her! I remember watching her on THJ, I guess a follow-up season with her storyline now impossible T.T

@31

What you consider "very well" Americans may not.

Anyway, entering a US high school at her age is going to be p.a.i.n.f.u.l. as students are not NICE at her age. I hope her family will be there for her as homesickness will kick in immediately if she has never been away from home before. Hopefully, she will be strengthened by the experience, but if it is to "make it" to Hollywood, don't hold your breath....We have plenty of talented Asian Americans.

We are not looking outside our borders for the next best thing if you know what I mean....just keeping it real. If it happens for her it happens for her.

Just wondering cuz she looks familiar. Was she the one who played the younger version of Su Ri in Hyun Bin's Snow Queen?

Sorry for going off-topic but, what kind of plant is that? I've never seen such plant before.

('O.O)

We have a small private high school here in Pittsburgh that has such a large population of foreign students from all over the world that when our son went there we used to jokingly refer to it as the United Nations. The class size is very small and so can deal with the issues of people with different English language levels. And despite the language differences, they are very demanding. Every year there are students who join the classes and so they are used to welcoming new people because many have had to move a number of times in their lives. I would hope she would be going somewhere like that because she would be well taken care of and nurtured. I am sure her family would look into these things carefully. I wish her the best.

I'm sure that somewhere along the line, she's had some previous
classes in English. It would be very tough for her to walk into an
American high school without having some kind of working vocabulary.

I remember that when I was in the 8th grade (12-13 years old)
we had a very scared girl come to our class whose family had ESCAPED
(this was in the years before the collapse of the Soviet-communist world)
from Hungary. She knew maybe ten words....yes....no......hello....etc.

By the time of 8th grade graduation, she knew enough to be able to
speak English understandibly. We were a pretty nice bunch of kids
in our class, so we took it as a class project to help ~ Ethel Laczay. ~

We got a pretty good education, too. We learned that thanks to communism,
Ethel and her parents HAD to escape, leaving her grandmother and the family dog behind. Something like that made a big impression on us American kids.

I hope that Shim Eun-kyung meets up with some great kids in Pittsburgh, too.

*

kudos should also go to her parents for raising their child in such a way that she could make wise decisions about her life at a very young age.

additional comment:

yes, it is impressive that this young lady chose education over fame. but please don't belittle other actors who stopped their schooling so they could concentrate on their acting career. some of these actors come from poor families and joining the entertainment industry is the easiest way for them to help their families financially.