Cha Hwa-yeon (born Cha Hak-kyung on December 27, 1960) is a South Korean actress. Cha made her acting debut in 1978, and became best known as the heroine Kim Mi-ja in the 1987 television drama Love and Ambition, a character who became an icon for modern Korean women in that era. But she retired a year later, after getting married in 1988. Cha returned to acting twenty years later in 2008 with Aeja's Older Sister, Minja.