Dex (entertainer)
Kim Jin-young, also known as Dex, is a South Korean entertainer, actor, and YouTuber. He has appeared on Netflix's dating show Single's Inferno Season 2 and zombie apocalypse survival show Zombieverse, MBC's game survival show Bloody Game, and ENA's action drama The Defects.
Career
2016–2020: Military service
In 2016, Kim Jin-young entered the military as a non-commissioned officer in the 251st Class, Republic of Korea Navy and part of ROKN UDT, Class 62-2. He served for 4 years. During his active duty, he was assigned in the Special Mission Battalion of the Naval Special Warfare Flotilla, a counter-terrorism unit. In 2018, he was also assigned to the 13th Akh Unit, a dispatched unit of the Republic of Korea Armed Forces to the United Arab Emirates.After being discharged from the military in 2020, he appeared in Fake Men 2, a military web entertainment show. In the same year, he appeared in MBC's game survival show Bloody Game.
2022–2023: Rising popularity
In 2022, Kim rose to fame when he participated in the second season of the Netflix dating show Single's Inferno. He was known as the "Catfish Man", who was brought in later to make the existing cast members stay together first and make the contestants nervous.In 2023, he returned as a participant in the second season of Bloody Game for which he won the Rookie Male Entertainer Award at the 2nd Blue Dragon Series Awards. He joined the second and third seasons of the travel variety show Adventure by Accident as a regular member with Kian84, Pani Bottle, and Lee Si-eon. The show won several awards at the 2023 MBC Entertainment Awards, and Kim received the Rookie Award and the Best Couple Award.
Dex is also the sole host for the YouTube show Dex's Fridge Interview by Channel 117. He hosted the 2023 MBC Entertainment Awards with Jun Hyun-moo and Lee Se-young, and also joined the third, fourth, and fifth seasons of Single's Inferno as a panel member.
2024–present: Acting and motorcycle racing debut
Dex appeared in several variety shows in 2024, such as MBC's University Sports Festival: Boys' Athletes' Village, where he served as a coach to college sports athletes; Disney+'s The Zone: Survival Mission 3 with Yoo Jae-suk, SNSD's Kwon Yu-ri, and Dong Hyun Kim; and JTBC's My Name is Gabriel, where he experienced the life of Rati, a wine jar maker, for 72 hours. He also showed sibling-like chemistry on tvN's Fresh off the Sea with Yum Jung-ah, Park Jun-myun, and Ahn Eun-jin. The show became a trending topic every week of its broadcast and Dex was dubbed as the "Nation's Younger Brother".Dex debuted as an actor in the third episode of Tarot: The Seven Chapter Story, a horror-thriller drama series. He used his real name, Kim Jin-young, as an actor, instead of his stage name, Dex, wanting to separate entertainment and acting. He then appeared in the second season of Netflix's Zombieverse, which premiered on November 19, 2024.
In 2025, Dex appeared in the action thriller The Defects as a main villain, and filmed special appeances for Bloodhounds: Season 2. On September 5th, 2025, it was confirmed that Dex will play the lead role in the upcoming fantasy romance, The Haunted House, a Korea-Japan joint global film project. The film is based on the short-story House of Ghosts from the book Dead-End Memories by the renowned Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto.