Imagine an actor so outstanding that they alone, if needed, can carry an entire film on their shoulders. Indeed, there are such gems in cinematic history and one of them is Song Kang-ho — the South Korean acting legend whom British actress Tilda Swinton described as “one of the protean greats of world cinema.” It is his undeniable charisma, unparalleled screen presence and absolute devotion to his craft playing everyday characters across genres that have earned Song Kang-ho some of the world’s most prestigious honours as well as helped him build a sizeable net worth in his country.
To much of the world, Song Kang-ho is the actor from Bong Joon-ho’s masterpiece Parasite (2019). If there were any (unwarranted) doubts regarding the maturity, grandness and influence of the South Korean film industry, Parasite put them all to rest by becoming the first Korean film to win the Palme d’Or and the first non-English-language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Of course, there is no need to even mention the numerous other accolades that came its way.
Indeed, Parasite cemented Song Kang-ho’s fame in world cinema. But anyone who thinks that that one movie is the most defining aspect of his illustrious career is perhaps unaware of Song’s long and accomplished career in Korean cinema, underscored by his methodical performances and his masterful transformation into the characters he plays on the screen.
Song’s brilliance as an actor is so enigmatic that it cannot be summed up in an essay, but his films do offer a glimpse into his grip over the roles he plays and how he stresses upon improvisations to make the portrayal of the character more realistic. Without an iota of doubt, therefore, Song is the kind of actor the world’s greatest auteurs, past and present, would want to cast in their films.
This is the biggest reason why there is so much excitement around Disney+ K-drama Uncle Samsik, which marks the debut of Song Kang-ho on the small screen. The period drama is set in the turbulent times of 1960s Korea and stars Song in the titular role of a fixer.
“I’ve been living in Korea for over 40 years but I find it unfamiliar and difficult to adapt. I’ve always been curious about the society I live in and the people making up that society. I also wanted to explore the origins of the people who formed present-day Korea and this was the perfect timing. Some may see Uncle Samsik as a historical drama and others might see it as film noir, but to me, it’s a romance story,” Song told Korea Times.
Of course, the show will make Song even more popular (and richer) than he already is. After conquering the big screen and the world through it, it was only the television space that the 57-year-old had not yet explored. With Uncle Samsik, which is touted to be a success, Song is set to expand the kingdom he started building over three decades ago.
Song Kang-ho: Net worth, highest-grossing movies and other details
What is the net worth of Song Kang-ho?
Unlike Hollywood stars, whose assets and most financial information are publicly known, it is difficult to find the exact net worth of Korean actors, no matter how big they are in terms of popularity, including Song Kang-ho.
According to celebrity wealth tracker, Celebrity Net Worth, Song has a net worth of USD 20 million. This might come across as an insignificant sum when compared with Hollywood actors of Song’s stature, but it should be noted that his movies are almost always screened in his home country and some other Asian countries where Korean cinema is popular. Hollywood has only recently started embracing Korean cinema, which is why much of Song’s body of work is from a period when the country’s film industry was still expanding beyond Asian shores.
Seen in that context and the fact that Song hasn’t yet properly transitioned to Hollywood, a net worth of USD 20 million is quite massive.
Career of Song Kang-ho: His most noteworthy movies
One of the biggest reasons why Song Kang-ho always manages to deliver nuanced performances one after the other is the fact that he has a theatrical background.
His career started at the National Theater before finding his place at the Yeonwoo Stage, where his life took a turn with a chance encounter with director Yi Sang-woo.
“Since I was young, I learned acting by forging myself in the theatre company scene. Yi Sang-woo and Kim Seok-man could be silent teachers because they were from the Yeonwoo stage. Mechanical engineering department can teach you how to sharpen a metal, but theatre and film department can’t teach you acting,” Song told Vogue Korea in an interview in 2009.
The theatre experience honed his skills as a meticulous reader of characters through which Song was able to understand the motivations, physicality and vulnerabilities they had. He merged his knowledge with his outstanding talent to bring out the depths of his character’s emotions through his dialogue delivery and physical expressions. As a result, audiences see less of acting and more of realism in his performances.
He spent almost half a decade in theatre before debuting on the big screen in Hong Sang-soo’s film The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1996). Though he played an extra in the film, his appearance was enough to bring Song to the attention of Korean directors.
The following year was when Song began his meteoric rise to superstardom. He starred in three films — Green Fish, Bad Movie and No.3. The third earned him a Best New Actor award at the 35th Grand Bell Awards — South Korea’s equivalent of Oscars. He also won the Best Supporting Actor award for the same film at the 18th Blue Dragon Film Awards, which is considered the second-most important film award in Korea.
In 1999, Song’s popularity rose with Kang Je-gyu’s blockbuster action thriller Shiri. Widely known as South Korea’s first Hollywood-style movie, Shiri is credited with propelling Hallyu (Korean wave) throughout Asia. The film is notable for obliterating the Korean box office records held by Titanic (1997) and, at the same time, cementing the fame of Choi Min-sik — another titan of Korean cinema — who played the film’s main antagonist. As for Song, Shiri turned him into a superstar even though he played a supporting role.
A year later, Song followed up on the success of Shiri with two major hits. The first was The Foul King in which he played a bank clerk turned professional wrestler. The second was the mystery thriller Joint Security Area, which is considered one of the greatest movies in Korean cinematic history. While he received accolades for both The Foul King and Joint Security Area, it was for the latter that he received his second Grand Bell award.
Song never looked back since the success of Joint Security Area. Over the next two decades until the release of Parasite, Song delivered at least one major critical and commercial success with iconic directors of Korean cinema every year. That’s a stellar record for any actor in any film industry in the world.
Some of those films speak for themselves: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Memories of Murder (2003), The President’s Barber (2004), The Host (2006), Secret Sunshine (2007), The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008), Thirst (2009), Secret Reunion (2010), The Face Reader (2013), The Attorney (2013), The Throne (2015), The Age of Shadows (2016), and A Taxi Driver (2017). Each of them is critically acclaimed and is, now, universally counted among some of the world’s finest movies.
During this period, he also appeared in Bong’s primarily English-language film Snowpiercer (2013) opposite Chris Evans. The film brought Song international attention.
Following Parasite, Song’s biggest success has been Broker (2022) by Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda. Song was widely praised for his role as a laundry shop owner who carries out the illegal business of selling unwanted babies at the adoption black market. For his heart-touching performance, Song won the Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first South Korean actor to do so.
Overall, Song has won five Grand Bell Awards and four Blue Dragon Film Awards. He also won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture as a cast member of Parasite.
Besides cinematic honours, he received the Okgwan Order of Cultural Merit in 2019 from the Government of South Korea to help raise the stature of Korean cinema.
Highest-grossing movies of Song Kang-ho
As is the case with all actors, the net worth of Song Kang-ho is built on the back of the earnings from his movies. However, there is no information on how much exactly Song Kang-ho gets as a salary for the movies he stars in.
Nevertheless, the box office earnings of his movies do indicate that he would be one of the highest-earning Korean actors.
Official data from KOBIS (Korean Box Office Information System), which started tracking Korean box office revenue in 2004, reveals that Song has been consistently delivering some of the highest-grossing Korean movies.
The list below shows the gross box office earnings for a selection of his movies and their position in the respective year’s chart:
The Host — USD 48 million [1st, 2016]
The Good, The Bad, The Weird — USD 32 million [1st, 2008]
Secret Reunion — USD 29.4 million [2nd, 2010]
Snowpiercer — USD 49 million [2nd, 2013]
The Face Reader — USD 48 million [3rd, 2013]
The Attorney — USD 30 million [6th, 2013]
The Throne — USD 35 million [5th, 2015]
The Age of Shadows — USD 44.8 million [3rd, 2016]
A Taxi Driver — USD 70 million [1st, 2017]
Parasite — USD 62 million [2nd, 2019]
Accordingly, A Taxi Driver is Song’s highest-grossing film in Korea. It was also the film which made Song the first Korean actor to star in three films that attracted over 10 million moviegoers each. The number now stands at four.
As for worldwide figures, American box office tracker The Numbers shows that Parasite is his highest-grossing movie, having recorded a total of USD 253 million worldwide. The other movies of Song Kang-ho that earned several millions at the worldwide box office are:
The Host — USD 92 million
A Taxi Driver — USD 87 million
The Attorney — USD 77 million
The Age of Shadows — USD 54.5 million
Emergency Declaration — USD 16 million
Thirst — USD 13.4 million
Broker — USD 12 million
To sum it up, 10 of his movies have earned around USD 450 million at the Korean box office and eight of his movies, including Parasite, have earned over USD 600 million worldwide.
Song Kang-ho brand endorsements
Song Kang-ho’s earliest known major endorsement deal was with South Korean liquor company Kooksoondang in February 2001. Song’s fame due to the success of Joint Security Area helped the brand become successful in the Japanese market within nine months of his signing.
He remained the face of the brand till 2005. Four years later, the brand signed him up once more in an exclusive contract for three years. At the time, it was unprecedented for a Korean celebrity to work with a brand for more than a year in the domestic market. Thus, Song was the first to get a long-term exclusive contract.
Among other brands and companies that Song has endorsed are Hana Financial Group, Hyundai Card, NH Nonghyup Bank and food company Nongshim. Though details of his endorsement deals have never been known, it was once reported in local media that he received “hundreds of millions of won” for endorsing air purifiers by Woongjin (now Conway) in 2005.
Song has not done any advertisements for six years since 2014. It was after the success of Parasite that he returned to brand endorsements with Lina Life Insurance in 2020. The same year, he also appeared in a commercial for the strategy video game Rise of Kingdoms developed by Chinese game maker Lilith Games.
Song Kang-ho’s personal life and philanthropy efforts
On the personal front, Song has been married to fellow theatre actor Hwang Jang-sook since 1994. They have two children, a son, Song Jun-pyeong, and a daughter, Song Joo-yeon. His son is a former footballer who played as a defender for Suwon Samsung Bluewings in K League 2.
Song is also known for his philanthropy efforts, though he reportedly maintains a low profile around them. Local media reports in 2022 revealed that he donated KRW 100 million (USD 74,000) to the Hope Bridge Disaster Relief Association, following a wildfire that affected two counties in two provinces. It was also reported the same year that he had donated of KRW 200 million (USD 148,000) to the same foundation in 2020 to support their efforts during the pandemic.
(Hero and Featured images: MUBI/@mubi/Twitter)
Manas Sen Gupta writes at the intersection of tech, entertainment and history. His works have appeared in publications such as The Statesman, Myanmar Matters, Hindustan Times and News18/ETV. In his spare time, Manas loves studying interactive charts and topographic maps. When not doing either, he prefers reading detective fiction. Spring is his favourite season and he can happily eat a bowl of noodles any time of the day.
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