Recently, online communities went abuzz with a report of Kim Soo Hyun‘s alleged appearance fee for the new tvN K-Drama, Queen of Tears.
Soon, news spread throughout the internet that the actor is being paid ₩800 million KRW (about $ 596,000 USD) per episode for the show. On March 26, KST, however, the production team of Queen of Tears told the press that the number being reported was not true.
Particularly, the Korean news outlet Newsen had reported, citing multiple production company representatives, that Kim Soo Hyun was receiving ₩800 million KRW (about $ 596,000 USD) per episode for the drama. As it is a 16-episode show, these numbers implied that his total earnings from Queen of Tears would be ₩12.8 billion KRW (about $ 9.54 million USD). This was a shocking amount for everyone, as it implied that his fee alone took up a third of the show’s entire budget of ₩40.0 billion KRW (about $ 29.8 million USD).
Though it was a very high amount, it did not seem outlandish when put in the context of reports about Kim’s appearance fees for previous projects. Particularly, for his last drama, One Ordinary Day, it was reported that the actor received ₩500 million KRW (about $ 373,000 USD) for each episode. Since it was an 8-episode show, his total appearance fee was ₩3.00 billion KRW (about $ 2.24 million USD).
But the Queen of Tears team directly told MyDaily that Kim Soo Hyun was not being paid 800 million per episode. They even mentioned that these reports have actually put the show and the actor in a difficult situation.
Though the team did not give any estimate of the real numbers, according to previous reports, the industry standard in Korea is to increase an actor’s fee by 1.2 to 1.3 times if their previous work is successful. This information was made public when the reportedly high appearance fee of actresses Park Eun Bin and Han So Hee created a stir online last month. You can read more about it here.
Source: Eadily
