Turner has picked up broadcast and syndication rights to Korea’s most highly anticipated drama in years – Saimdang, starring Jewel in the Palace’s Lee Young-ae in her first TV appearance in more than a decade.

The deal with production house Group 8 for the 30x60-minute series covers pay-TV, free-TV and subscription video on demand in four Asia markets – Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.

The agreement allows Turner to air episodes within 10 minutes of the domestic Korean broadcast on free-TV channel SBS.

Financial terms of the Turner agreement have not been disclosed.

Turner Asia Pacific president, Ricky Ow, said only that the deal “demonstrates Turner’s continued commitment to investing in the very best Asian content out there”.

The price tag is highly likely to be on the upper end of anything Turner has paid for a series before.

The series’ production budget is said to be more than US$15 million, or upwards of US$650,000 per episode.

At the Busan Contents Market in May this year, Chinese buyers were said to have committed US$250,000 per episode. Buyers in Thailand and Hong Kong are also believed to have gone way above their usual budgets.

Saimdang (working title) will air in 2016. Lee Young-ae plays dual roles as a university lecturer of Korean art in the present day and the 16th-century artist, writer and poet Shin Saimdang, one of the most respected women in Korean history. The story moves between past and present, tracing the efforts of a modern-day scholar to uncover secrets of the past.

Published 27 July 2015