Kim Hye-su, greatest star in the world

There is nothing in this world that I like more than Kim Hye-su, star of last year's movie "Tajja" (computer-animated Luke Wilson/John Goodman starring buddy-comedy-like English title "A Gambling, Scrambling Life"). And so it was good news to me that Hye-su had been featured in the New York Times . Because if there is one thing Korean that those outside the kimchi-belt should care about, it's her. So I was sitting in the hot tub this morning when the story came on the news. Kim Hye-su is in teh New York Times, the NYT loves Kim Hye-su, she's like Eva Gardner, et cetera et cetera ad nauseum. I knew I had to check this one out, so I fired up the old internet and looked it up. In a favorable review for Tazza, the following things were said about Kim Hye-su:
"[She plays] a gambling ace who's Lee Marvin in Ava Gardner's body. She and Go Ni have a relaxed, tender chemistry, like characters from an early Jean-Luc Godard picture." "But the film's true pleasures are visceral, sensual: the curve of a woman [presumably Kim]'s naked back as she sits on a bed talking to her lover. . . "
I mean, that's it. That's all she wrote. I mean, that's all Matt Zoller Seitz wrote. And this was headline news, all over the TV this morning. The YTN News (Korea) article, entitled "New York Times Praises Tazza's Kim Hye-su", reads like the paper of record did a full spread about her.
"This describes Kim's beauty and acting ability, as Ava Gardner is a beautiful actress from the 50s and 60s and Lee Marvin is an Academy Award Winner."
Close enough. But I still don't really understand how they made it into a news feature full of hot shots of Kim Hye-su that you can see here. And does the term Korean wave, usually applied to Korean things that capture the eyes of the Asian masses, be applied to a movie that opens in a few art theaters in America and will mostly be seen by film aesthetes? How are those two seemingly unrelated phenomenon both called the Korean Wave?
Anyway, more importantly, check out these pictures of Hye-su.