[3] Gong has spoken fondly of her memories of her time there, and in 2011 she was designated as one of the goodwill ambassadors for "Year of Friendship," the 50th anniversary of bilateral relations between Australia and South Korea.

Co-directed by Kim Tae-yong and Min Kyu-dong, the comedy film reinvented its genre with its fresh approach on teenage femme sexuality and its destructive force, melding sapphism and the supernatural at a girls' high school.

[16] The TV series was praised for its realistic writing and strong acting, earning it "mania drama" (or cult hit) status in Korea.

[19] The 2003 series Snowman paired Gong with Cho Jae-hyun and Kim Rae-won, in a controversial plot about a girl who falls in love with her older brother-in-law.

[27] In 2009, Memento Mori director Kim Tae-yong (whom Gong considers her mentor[28]) offered her a part in Family Ties, a role he had written specifically for her.

The cast was praised for their brilliant acting, with reviews singling out Gong's portrayal of an angry young woman in a deeply troubled relationship with her mother.

[32] Several actresses had turned down the unglamorous role of a single mother with an HIV-positive daughter and a grandfather with dementia; another reason being that this was lead actor Jang Hyuk's comeback after his draft-dodging scandal.

The maternal role served to soften and feminize her image, but Gong was also praised for her nuanced portrayal that grounded her character in reality, helping to prevent the drama from being overly maudlin or saccharine.

[39] The black comedy was a showcase for Gong, who transformed herself into a misanthropic antiheroine with an unattractively blushing red face, frizzy hair, dowdy clothes, and a chronic case of inferiority complex and hopeless delusion.

[10] Park Chan-wook, who produced the film, praised Gong's subtle emotional variations,[45] and told her that she might never be able to top this performance, joking that she should retire.

[50][51] After starring with close friend Shin Min-ah in the 2009 indie Sisters on the Road,[52][53] Gong played an aspiring chef in romantic comedy series Pasta in 2010.

[57] Defying easy categorization into the actress dichotomies of innocent (Choi Ji-woo, Song Hye-kyo) or sexy (Kim Hye-soo, Uhm Jung-hwa), Gong belonged to a third, very minor group of eccentrics that also include Kang Hye-jung and Bae Doona.

"[28] In an emerging pattern of alternating mainstream TV series with riskier big-screen projects, Gong starred in Rolling Home with a Bull, another low-budget indie adapted from Kim Do-yeon's novel.

In Kim's short film You Are More Than Beautiful, Park Hee-soon plays a man who hires an actress named Young-hee (Gong) to pretend to be his fiancée when he introduces her to his dying father in Jeju Island.

[70][71] Uninterested in stereotypical pretty roles, Gong said she preferred playing multi-faceted women, like the laidback, unpredictable female lead with unshaved armpit hair in Love Fiction.

[74][75] Though Gong said she would rather continue making small-scale films rather than do a shallow blockbuster,[76] Love Fiction was her most commercial feature yet, and broke even at more than 1.7 million admissions.

[77] She then reunited with Love Fiction co-star Ha Jung-woo in 577 Project, a documentary that follows a group of actors walking 577 kilometers (358 miles) across the nation.

[90] Despite lackluster ratings, It's Okay, That's Love ranked third on the year-end Content Power Index and received praise for addressing the discrimination and social stigma attached to people with mental health issues and other minorities.

[95] In 2016, Gong starred in the SBS romantic comedy drama Don't Dare to Dream opposite Jo Jung-suk, playing a weather broadcaster.

In 2012 she designed a selected line of apparel for the fashion shop Los Angeles Project, a brand located inside Shinsegae Department Stores.

[124] Later on August 17, 2022, Kevin announced in letters posted on his social media accounts that they are getting married in October in United States, and will be held privately with only close relatives from both families.