Song Kang-ho Received 700 Million Won Per Episode Despite “Uncle Samsik” Failure?
Song Kang-ho was reportedly paid 11.2 billion won for his appearance in “Uncle Samsik”, more than a quarter of the drama production cost
On June 7th, a casting director, who has 10 years of experience working with global OTT, said, “I heard Song Kang-ho, who made his drama debut with ‘Uncle Samsik’, received 700 million won per episode”.
The production company and Disney+ remain silent about appearance fees, so it is hard to confirm the exact amount. However, managers of some other “Uncle Samsik” actors altogether said, “Song Kang-ho’s appearance fees per episode was 700 million won”.
This amount is lower than the 1.3 billion won Lee Jung-jae, the most famous actor in Korea, receives for each episode of “Squid Game 2”, but it’s comparable to the appearance fees of top actors Lee Byung-hun, Song Joong-ki, and Kang Dong-won. Some people think 700 million won is reasonable, considering Song Kang-ho is a veteran actor.
However, many people feel regretful knowing the drama is not gaining much attention. An official in the movie industry said, “Song Kang-ho got paid 800 million won for ‘Parasite’, but it is surprising that he gained 700 million won per episode for a global OTT drama. There seems to be no way for local capital to surpass a US OTT platform with immense financial power”.
Leading actors have earned a lot since the diversification of platforms, but this also leads to some downsides. Production companies, which take only 6-7% as fees, and writers and directors, who must hand over all the IP rights, are becoming more and more like American agencies, and the equity issue is expected to intensify. A drama production company CEO commented, “A Korean employee at Netflix has recently been assigned to work in Japan, sparking rumors that the production base might be moving from Korea to Japan”.
They added, “It is said that Disney+ may have to review their entire Korean business following the failures of Han Hyo-joo’s drama ‘Blood Free’, in which it invested 24 billion won, and ‘Uncle Samsik’ in terms of popularity and topics. If the current situation with 52-hour working weeks and rising labor costs for actors and staff continues, global OTT platforms may move to other places that are more cost-effective than Korea”.
The highly anticipated drama “Uncle Samsik” has released up to 11 episodes but it couldn’t attract attention due to its unappealing directing, slow development, and greedy narratives.
Regarding Song Kang-ho’s appearance fees, the actor’s agency Sublime explained, “The actor signed a contract with Slingshot Studio, the production company of ‘Uncle Samsik’, for a 10-episode drama and completed filming it before the number of episodes increased to 16 after editing. As such, he earned less than 400 million won for 16 episodes”.
