More Actors Suffer High Appearance Fees Rumors: Kim Soo-hyun, Park Eunbin & IU

Regarding the controversy over actors’ appearance fees, Kim Go-eun said, “I have to be responsible for the amount I earn. I need to have conscience and responsibility”. Song Joong-ki and Han Ji-min also shared, “Receiving the money means you have to prove its value properly. Success is both my personal ambition but also responsibility”, and “All the lead actors carry burdens. But don’t they get paid a lot for that?”.

It is true that lead roles are very important. Leading actors directly affect the popularity of the whole project and their presence alone is one of the biggest factors that determine the quality of the project. However, with the emergence of OTT platforms in the Korean drama industry, actors’ appearance fees have soared significantly. In this regard, the Korea Drama Production Association has discussed the problems and solutions to this crisis since January.

Due to the rise in actors’ appearance fees, drama production costs have also been soaring. Many officials in the film and drama industry have expressed concerns that this increasing budget would affect the completeness of the project negatively as the number of staff and payments for staff have to be reduced. Amid the current situation, the public has naturally begun searching for actors with such high appearance fees.

On March 26th, an article reported that Kim Soo-hyun received 800,000 million won per episode to appear in tvN’s “Queen of Tears”. Since it’s a 16-episode drama, the actor is said to receive 12.8 billion won after completing the drama, which is one-third of the drama’s production cost of 40 billion won. However, the production company Studio Dragon strongly refuted it. Later, rumors of Kim Soo-hyun’s 300-million-won appearance fees were raised and netizens continued to question the exact number the actor received for “Queen of Tears”, citing the fact that he earned 500 million won per episode from his previous work Coupang’s “One Ordinary Day”.

Park Eun-bin and IU also suffered from similar rumors. Following the success of “Extraordinary Attorney Woo” and “Castaway Diva”, Park Eun-bin will work with Seol Kyung-gyu in OTT drama “Hyper Knife”, but even before the cast was confirmed, there were already rumors that the actress received 300 million won per episode. As criticism emerged, Park Eun-bin’s company and the drama production company had to release statements, saying “We never offered 300 million won”.

In the case of IU, rumors of her appearance fees rising up to 500 million won per episode broke out. Despite the production team’s explanation and clarification, netizens continued to pour criticism.

It is true that news of actors’ appearance fees, even if they’re just rumors, is causing inconvenience to the public these days. However, with foreign capital coming from OTT platforms, it is inevitable that production teams should also consider casting top stars with large fanbases if they target overseas viewers.