Salary Difference Between Top Korean And Japanese Actors Sparks Heated Debate

Recently, a community post went viral in Korea in which the OP (original poster) compared the fee received by a top Korean actor against that of his Japanese counterparts.

The discussion was sparked, in particular, after a report stated that Kim Soo Hyun, often considered the highest-paid K-Drama actor, received ₩300 million KRW (about $222,000 USD) appearance fee per episode for his ongoing tvN K-Drama Queen of Tears.

A netizen reacted to this report, noting that, in comparison, Japanese actors get paid a lot less. They highlighted some figures, such as in 2022, popular actor Oguri Shun received around ₩5.00 million KRW (about $3,700 USD) per episode for an NHK drama, a top broadcasting network in the country.

Similarly, another popular Japanese actor, Aragaki Yui, was paid around [KRW] 3 million [/KRW], and Suda Masaki received [KRW] 2 million [/KRW] per episode of their most recent projects.

The OP ended the post adding that they felt Korea overpays its actors and should adopt the Japanese structure instead. Many netizens agreed with this viewpoint, asking for a change in the domestic industry.

• “Our country is seriously messed up. They get paid like Hollywood actors, while the staff below are paid peanuts… LOL. Just look at the co-ordis; they run around like crazy when they’re starting out and don’t even make 400,000 a month. And it’s not like they’re treated well, either. They have to hear “f*cker this, f*cker that,” and endure power abuse, while the pay they receive isn’t even much.”
• “Timothy, who is a world-renowned star, reportedly received 12 billion KRW for his Willy Wonka. When you keep that in mind, it is absurd that a celebrity from such a small country like ours gets paid tens of millions of won per episode.”
• “The staff does all the grunt work, and they take all the money, LOL.”
• “Instead of copying the weird things from them, let’s follow stuff like this, please.”
• “In our country, the celebrities are the new nobility, LOL.”

Meanwhile, the production crew of Queen of Tears has denied that Kim Soo Hyun is being paid over ₩3.00 billion KRW (about $2.22 million USD) for the entire show. Read more about it here.