The Korean Television Drama Production Company Association made a bizarre decision last Friday (Dec 6) to ban actor Park Shin-yang from appearing in any K-dramas in the future, stating that his ‘outrageous’ wage demand as the reason behind the sanction.
Park requested 170.5million won (~USD110k) per extension episode for his previous drama “War of Money”, which the production complied to but failed to pay up in full [more on Hanfever]
Park has filed a lawsuit to claim his unpaid fees (~ 341mil won), which probably prompted the Friday meeting which led to the ban.
The association is also requesting TV stations to ban the involved production company for giving in to Park’s demand at the first place and ‘disrupting the orders’ of drama production.
At the moment an A-list Korean star could demand 30-40mil won per episode, a few super A-listers could get 70-80mil, while the one and only Bae Yong-joon was paid 200mil won when filming “The Legend” per episode. Bae’s case was a bit unique though for the fact that foreign investors were heavily involved.
Korean drama production companies have been complaining a lot lately about the high wages demanded by the actors and actresses. They were planning to set a cap on the actors’ wages last month, which I believe is already being implemented unofficially… as some of the big names are ‘voluntarily’ reducing their wages recently.
Park Shin-yang is obviously a guinea pig for the association to show their determination in the wage battle. He has not done anything wrong legally, but there’s always hidden rules in every industry that needs to be followed, unfortunately… and he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
