Korea has a bill to make streamers keep paying writers after the hit

A bill giving Korean directors, screenwriters and performers the right to be paid again when their work earns money on streaming was introduced in the National Assembly on 18 September.

The amendment to the Copyright Act would let audiovisual creators claim remuneration for revenue generated by the use of their work after they have transferred their rights to a production company. It would also give them a right to demand information about how the work has been used and what it has earned.

That second right matters as much as the first. Korean creators currently have no mechanism to find out what a show made once it left their hands, which makes any claim unenforceable even where goodwill exists.

Introduced on 18 September, it would give directors, screenwriters and performers a right to claim payment even after they have signed their rights away.

A coalition of six organisations backed the bill on the day it was filed: the Directors Guild of Korea, the Association of Korean Independent Film and Video, the Korea TV and Radio Writers Association, the Screenwriters Association of Korea, the Korean Association of Broadcasting Performers' Rights, and the Korea Independent PD Association.

They said in a joint statement that Korean creators are paid under foreign law when their work is used abroad, while receiving nothing at home for the same use, and that a minimum safeguard for domestic creators was needed.

The structure they are objecting to is the buy-out contract, which spread as global streamers moved into Korean commissioning. The platform funds the production and takes the rights; the director, writer and performers are paid a fee at the point of work and have no claim on anything that follows, however large the show becomes.

The precedent is not theoretical. At a 2022 National Assembly audit, MPs put to Netflix that the company already pays statutory remuneration to writers and directors in Argentina, Spain, France and Switzerland under local law, while applying different terms in Korea. The Netflix executive present said the company believed it paid fairly, and asked the committee to weigh the fact that it carries the commercial risk and funds dubbing, translation and global marketing.

Korean industry opposition is organised. In 2023, five broadcast and platform bodies, covering broadcasters, cable, IPTV, internet companies and the domestic streaming association, issued a joint statement against an earlier version of the remuneration right, arguing that producers have already paid creators under contract and that a further statutory obligation would amount to paying twice.

The Directors Guild rejected the framing then, saying the word was not additional compensation but fair compensation, and that in a chain running from platform to distributor to investor to producer to creator, the party invoking freedom of contract is the one positioned to push the cost downwards.

The culture committee has scheduled Choi Seung-hyun, vice-president of Netflix Korea, as a witness on 12 October, to be questioned on the private negotiating body set up between rights holders, performers and streaming operators.

There is already money moving in one direction. The Directors Guild of Korea has been receiving remuneration paid by Netflix under Argentine law on work directed by Korean directors, and distributing it to them.

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