[2] He is best known for his leading roles in the television shows Jewel in the Palace (2003), He Who Can't Marry (2009), Dong Yi (2010), I Have a Lover (2015), Second to Last Love (2016), Misty (2018) and Designated Survivor: 60 Days (2019).

Content at his present job and doubtful that he had any acting talent, Ji refused the offers for a year, but finally agreed when the ad agency downsized during the IMF financial crisis and he got laid off.

[15] Fighting against being typecast in nice roles after Dae Jang Geum, Ji also played a playboy slacker in romantic comedy series Miss Kim's Million Dollar Quest (2004), for which he received his first acting award.

[17] In 2007, Ji starred in Im Sang-soo's The Old Garden, adapted from Hwang Sok-yong's novel about a couple who meet during the turbulent 1980s surrounding the Gwangju Uprising; he played an anti-government activist who gets released from prison after serving 17 years for his political activities.

Ji continued playing leading roles in television, as an airline pilot in Take Care of Us, Captain (2012), general and Joseon dynasty founder Yi Seong-gye in The Great Seer (2012), an adulterous husband in One Warm Word (2013), and a villainous doctor in Blood (2015).

[43] From 2014 to 2015, Ji starred in three Chinese films, namely: On the Way opposite Eva Huang, in which a recently divorced Korean man meets a Chinese woman on a train while traveling in China;[44] Bad Sister opposite Ivy Chen, a romantic comedy where a father who wants to stop his daughter's wedding teams up with the groom's equally disapproving older sister;[45] and Helios, a crime thriller about the theft of nuclear weapons by a group of terrorists.

[47] Ji Jin-hee married his long-time girlfriend, advertising graphic designer Lee Soo-yeon, at the Central City Millennium Hall in Banpo, Seoul on November 19, 2004, at 5 PM.