Writer Park Hae-young says hit dramas bring writers no extra pay under lump-sum deals, as a Copyright Act amendment and a lost court case frame the fight.
SEOUL, South Korea (Screenplay Biz) – One of South Korea’s most prominent television screenwriters has made a public case that writers of hit dramas receive nothing beyond their original fee, no matter how widely a series is streamed. Park Hae-young, the author of My Mister and My Liberation Notes, told the Kyunghyang Shinmun that lump-sum contracts leave writers with no share in success, and she is now weighing how influential writers can speak out together. Her argument arrives with a bill in the National Assembly and a recent court defeat for another writer in the background.
Park Hae-young makes the case
The interview, published by the English edition of the Kyunghyang Shinmun, followed a press conference at the National Assembly earlier in the month. Park wrote tvN’s My Mister in 2018, JTBC’s My Liberation Notes in 2022 and a 2026 series titled Everyone Is Fighting Their Worthlessness, and she has chaired the Copyright Committee of the Korea Broadcasting Writers Association for three years. The headline of the piece makes the point bluntly: even for a smash hit, the extra compensation is zero won.
How the buyout contracts work
The interview describes a system in which creators receive the manuscript fee and the copyright fee in one lump sum up front. If the work becomes a major hit, they receive nothing more, and there is no performance-linked guarantee of the kind found in the film industry. The article points to a provision of the Copyright Act that presumes broadcasters or streaming services hold the rights they need to use an audiovisual work unless a special agreement says otherwise.
Writers once won such agreements. According to the same report, the writers’ association and broadcasters agreed special clauses in 1991 that let writers earn copyright fees on reruns and overseas sales, after writers staged a strike lasting a month. The difficulty now, the interview says, is that Netflix and Disney+ reject those special clauses, and writers who need a broadcast slot often find it hard to refuse. The article also notes that copyright lasts 70 years after publication and that the rising fees of famous writers push up production costs, which shrinks returns and leads to fewer dramas being made. That last point is the industry-side concern, and it is worth keeping alongside the writers’ case rather than dismissing it.
A court case that went against a writer
The legal climate has not favored writers so far. The Korea Times reported that the screenwriter of the ENA series Extraordinary Attorney Woo lost a claim for a share of streaming revenue. The writer argued that the 2019 contract assumed television broadcast only, so a distribution deal with Netflix was secondary use that required revenue sharing. The production company, AStory, rejected the claim, and a writers’ association, which the Korea Times names as the Korea Television Writers Association, sued on the writer’s behalf.
The Seoul High Court upheld the lower court’s ruling for AStory. Both courts found that streaming distribution fell within the contract’s scope, relying on the standard contract’s “broadcasting and other purposes” wording and on the Copyright Act’s presumption that broadcasting and transmission rights are granted unless the parties say otherwise. The court also noted that the writer had not objected when the Netflix deal was finalized and had earlier proposed a Netflix original. The report gives the writing fee under that contract as 9 million won per episode and does not disclose the revenue at issue. The association chose not to appeal, so the ruling became final in February.
The legislative push and the comparisons
Park’s interview describes a Copyright Act amendment introduced the previous month by Rep. Lim Oh-Kyung of the Democratic Party of Korea that would give creators a right to remuneration even after they transfer their copyright to broadcasters or streamers. It also notes that writers, directors and actors formed the Creators’ Coalition for Fair Compensation for K-Content in 2024, and it points to two outside models: the European Union’s 2019 copyright directive, which set out the principle of proportionate remuneration, and the Writers Guild of America’s 2023 gains on residuals tied to streaming viewership.
Star writers have leverage, others do not
Context from an earlier Korea Times feature shows why a campaign led by a name writer matters. That article reported that star writers with devoted audiences, including the Hong sisters and Noh Hee-kyung, were returning in 2026 with original stories, countering a market dominated by adaptations of webtoons and web novels. Park, it said, was preparing a JTBC series. The feature did not discuss pay, but it shows that established writers carry commercial weight that newer writers lack. Park says in the Kyunghyang interview that her aim is to help all writers, including less-known ones.
What it means for writers working abroad (analysis)
These points are analysis drawn from the reports and are not legal advice.
- Read the rights clause first. In the Woo case, the court read a standard contract’s wording to include streaming. Writers anywhere should check what “other purposes” covers before they sign.
- Know what you are trading. A lump-sum fee is a bet that a project will not become a hit. Writers who accept it should price that risk, or ask for a performance-linked bonus where the buyer will agree to one.
- Leverage is collective. The 1991 clauses in Korea and the 2023 residual gains in the United States both came through organized action, not individual negotiation.
- Expect the argument to travel. Co-productions and platform commissions mean writers in other territories are likely to meet the same terms.
Whether the amendment passes, and in what form, is not yet known. The reports reviewed describe a proposal, not a law.
Bohiney Magazine covers Hollywood and the entertainment business from the comedy side, with its home at Bohiney.com.
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