After a month of its release, the romance K-drama Queen of Tears has managed to hit its highest rating yet, even amid controversies. Aside from the show’s riveting plot, there’s no doubt that the show has gained this much attention thanks to the show’s main stars, Kim Ji Won and Kim Soo Hyun, who, by the way, is one of the highest-paid Korean actors in 2024!
READ: Kim Soo Hyun Is One of the Highest-Paid Korean Actors in 2024
The two-time Grand Bell Award-winner has landed several acting roles, brand endorsements, and advertisements throughout his career, with each appearance earning him millions of won.
Despite having debuted in the entertainment industry as far back as 2007, it wasn’t until 2011 that he got his big break with the musical teen drama Dream High. The following year, he starred in The Thieves, which went on to become the second-highest-grossing film in Korea. That same year, Soo Hyun also landed the leading man role in the historical drama series Moon Embracing the Sun. Thanks to the success of these acting projects, by the end of 2012, he had received a whopping 600 million Korean won or a P23 million paycheck at the time.
Fast forward to the 2020s, and he’s the main character in the hitK-drama series It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, where he was said to have earned 200 million won (P8.3 million) per episode.
His appearance fee only continued to increase with each project. In the 2021 web series One Ordinary Day, he earned almost triple his previous appearance fee, with his rate being over 500 million won (P20.8 million) per episode. And now, with Queen of Tears, rumors have spread that he’s earning 800 million won (P33.4 million) per episode–a shocking amount given that the series is said to have 16 episodes total. That would leave Soo Hyun with 12.8 billion won (P533 million) by the end of season one, taking up a third of the show’s entire budget of 40 billion won (P1.7 billion).
However, these rumors have been dispelled by the Queen of Tears team and by Studio Dragon, stating that these allegations are untrue and that his fee is far from the rumored amount. According to other reports, Soo Hyun has even voluntarily cut his appearance fee for Queen of Tears to less than what he was earning in One Ordinary Day, due to his concern over the growing burden of production costs. While decreasing their appearance fee would usually be an issue for other actors, this just goes to show how humble Soo Hyun continues to be even after reaching his level of stardom.
Even though we can't confirm the exact numbers of Soo Hyun's current appearance fee, he's still known to be one of the highest-paid actors in Korea in 2024 alongside Lee Jung Jae (300 million won per episode for Squid Game), Song Joong Ki (200 million won per episode for Vincenzo), and Song Hye Kyo (200 million won per episode for The Glory).
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