In the 1990s, Kang appeared in a number of movies, the best known of which are Jang Sun-woo's acclaimed Road to the Racetrack which won her the Chunsa Film Art Awards and Blue Dragon Film Awards for Best Actress, the box office hit movie titled That Woman, That Man by Kim Ui-seok, Lee Myung-se's film about adultery titled Their Last Love Affair and Im Sang-soo's debut film Girls Night Out. By the end of the 90s, she had acted in 32 movies and after her movie Rainbow Trout was released in 1999 winning her the Paeksang Arts Awards for Best Actress, she cut down her work in movies and took to acting in TV drama. Kang was invited to be a juror in the 5th Pusan International Film Festival in the year 2000.
In 2001, Kang starred in the popular 150 episodes TV Drama aired on SBS TV titled Ladies of the Palace (Yeo-in Cheon-ha). The TV drama managed to garner her new visibility among mainstream audiences. Her performance in the TV Drama as Jung Nan-jung enabled her to win the Performance Award awarded by SBS TV. After a brief hiatus from the movie scene, she make her comeback in the movie The Circle playing the role of an attorney. Kang has since then appeared in another movie titled Hanbando in 2006. In 2007, she make another foray into mainstream TV after a gap of six years by acting in the MBC TV Drama by the name of Moonhee. In the TV Drama, she played the role of a woman who is forced to leave her child she had when she was only eighteen and thus the TV Drama seeks to portray the travails of the woman's life