Explainer | How much are Kim Soo-hyun and Song Joong-ki paid? Breaking down K-drama stars’ ever-rising salaries
- Kim, star of It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, will earn more than US$440,000 per episode for One Ordinary Day. Song probably topped US$155,000 per episode for Vincenzo
- Major actors’ fees have shot up in the past few years, but even top actresses earn far less, and average actor pay fell 30 per cent in the four years to 2019
K-dramas are big business and the engines that keep them running are their stars. Hot prime-time shows capture the zeitgeist in South Korea, but they’ve proven just as popular overseas, allowing big-name actors to command extravagant fees.
Yet, as K-dramas become more popular in the streaming market, star salaries have gone haywire.
After Korean dramas first caught the imagination of foreign viewers two decades ago, star salaries were known to be around 20 to 30 million won per episode, but the 100 million won era soon followed when Korean idol Bae Yong-joon became the first to crack the mark for The Legend in 2007, the last show he headlined before retiring.
Eleven years later, Lee Byung-hun set a new benchmark when his per-episode fee for Mr. Sunshine was revealed to be 150 million won. And as the swelling streaming market heightened the value of Korean dramas around the world, the next milestone came just two years later, in 2020, when Kim Soo-hyun reportedly snagged 200 million won (US$155,000) per episode for It’s Okay to Not Be Okay .
Even that sum pales in comparison with the fees top actors are reputedly able to command in 2021 – there is talk of some being paid 300 million won per episode.
