A recent Gallup poll in Korea voted Yoo Ah In as the best actor of the year. The poll was titled "Actors Who Brightened Up The Year" and listed 10 actors and actresses.

According to the media outlet Korea Times, the 29-year-old actor received 26.9 percent of the votes, in the survey conducted between Oct. 29 and Nov. 21

The actor showed his range by appearing in two films and a drama this year. He played the tragic Crown Prince Sado in "The Throne." The king could not execute the young prince, who history judged to be murderously insane. Instead his father locked him in a rice chest until he died. The film sold over six million tickets.

In November Yoo won a Best Actor Award for his role at Prince Sado at the Blue Dragon Film Awards. At 29 he was the youngest actor to win the Blue Dragon Best Actor Awards, since Lee Jung Jae won in 1999 at the age of 27.

Yoo Also played a cruel and reckless chaebol in the film "Veteran." The film became the third highest grossing movie of all time in Korea.

Yoo has shown his range in dramas too. In Yoo's current drama "Six Flying Dragons," he plays a real-life prince again. This time he is Prince Yi Bang Won, who later became King Taejong. In 2014 he played a vulnerable musical prodigy who falls in love with his much older piano teacher in "Secret Love Affair."

Yoo dropped out of high school to act and made his debut in 2003 in the drama "Sharp 1." His breakout role happened in 2010 when he played a Sungkyunkwan student Moon Gae Shin in "Sungkyunkwan Scandal." When he appeared in the 2011 film "Punch," his co-star Yoo Yeon Suk predicted his future success.

"In the next 10 years he will be one of the biggest names in Korean cinema," Yoo Yeon Suk told the Korean media outlet Joongang Daily.

It didn't even take 10 years.