Im Soo-hyang Missed 15 Years of Rerun Royalties from Her Debut Drama

Actress Im Soo-hyang spent 15 years unknowingly leaving rerun royalties on the table. Appearing on the SBS variety program My Ugly Duckling on the 2nd, she revealed that she had never received a single payment from the continuous rebroadcasting of Shin Gisaengdyeon, the drama that launched her career back in 2009.

The drama came up after the panel noted it remains popular with younger audiences to this day, more than a decade and a half after it first aired. Im said she still hears lines from the show circulating among younger viewers, and traced some of them back to screenwriter Im Seong-han's distinctive style of dialogue. "Young people are saying them a lot," she noted. "I didn't know what they were quoting at first, and then I realized it was my own lines. I'm genuinely grateful."

Host Shin Dong-yeop pressed her on the royalty situation, asking whether she had really never been paid despite all those reruns. Her answer was straightforward: she simply did not know the system existed.

"The association contacted me," she explained. "They asked why I hadn't registered. They told me the money had been piling up." The problem was timing. She only learned about the rerun royalty registration system after wrapping a later project, Iris, and was told at that point that anything accumulated before her registration could not be recovered. The years of Shin Gisaengdyeon payments were already gone.

The rerun royalty system in Korea is administered through industry unions that actors must actively join to receive payments when their work is rebroadcast. It is not automatic, and for a performer early in her career, the paperwork can be easy to miss if no one in your circle flags it.

Im Soo-hyang is currently appearing on stage in the play The Lives of Others, where she plays the lead role of East Germany's foremost actress. Her appearance on My Ugly Duckling covered her career from that debut period through to her current work.