Singles' Inferno's Song Ji-ah revealed to make $34K per Instagram post
SEOUL - South Korean beauty influencer Song Ji-ah, who was embroiled in a fake branded goods controversy recently, has been revealed to make an average of 30 million won (S$34,000) per Instagram post.
Her management agency Hyowon CNC shared the figure with South Korean magazine Star 1 and also divulged that she earns 80 million won per video mention on YouTube.
According to the report, Song, 25, who shot to fame as the fan favourite in reality dating show Single's Inferno, commands higher advertisement fees than some South Korean celebrities.
Also known as FreeZia, she started her YouTube channel in 2019 and has seen her subscriber count skyrocket from about 500,000 before her Single's Inferno appearance to 1.9 million currently.
Her Instagram account has seen a similar surge in popularity and she now has 3.5 million followers.
Even after she apologised with a handwritten note on Monday (Jan 17) for using counterfeit luxury goods from brands such as Chanel and Dior, and deleted all content which had featured the products, she had come under intense scrutiny.
A now-deleted house tour video of her swanky apartment at Seoul Forest Trimage, one of the most exclusive addresses in the city, was slammed for being a sham, as it was alleged to not belong to her but rented by her agency.
Meanwhile, more and more old content of hers had been dug up by netizens, who pointed out suspicious details of the luxury goods she had flaunted online.
Hyowon C&C's chief executive Kim Hyo Won said: "Ji-ah has never tried hard to make imitations look like genuine goods by purchasing A-grade imitations from overseas or anything.
"Most of the time, she didn't know it was a copy of a luxury good and just bought items online because they were pretty. There were many instances where she later found out it was a design from a luxury brand."
The reality star was set to appear on variety show Omniscient Interfering View and hit talk show Knowing Bros, but their producers have decided to edit out her portions in the wake of the scandal.
Even fellow Single's Inferno contestant Kim Hyeon-joong, 28, who was romantically linked to Song on the show, had distanced himself by unfollowing her on Instagram.
"There has been a lot of attention (on us) and Ji-ah also wasn't following me. I didn't want unnecessary rumours to start circulating so that's why I decided to unfollow her too," he said on Wednesday (Jan 19) to Maeil Business Paper, a South Korean news outlet. "There were no other reasons. Honestly, I had no idea that there was a controversy at the time."
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