Steven Yeun, who is the first Asian American actor to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his work in Minari (2020), has built a considerable fortune over the years. Here is a closer look at the net worth of Steven Yeun.
It all started with his role as Glenn Rhee in The Walking Dead, which not only brought him fame but also opened major career avenues that have helped him become the actor and producer he is today. The American zombie horror series also got him some of the most notable and commercially successful roles of his career, including Beef (2023- ), Minari and Nope (2022) — all great scripts for which Yeun seems to have a knack.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Yeun talked about his process of picking scripts, “…the thing that I always gravitate towards is ‘Is the story trying to say something?’ I don’t even mean like, is it trying to teach something? I don’t really care to teach anything. Is it trying to reflect something off of our society or off of something that I believe? I think every script thus far that I’ve said yes to had something that deeply resonated with me.”
With hits like these, he was among Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2021.
Yeun was most recently seen in the post-apocalyptic romantic sci-fi movie Love Me, alongside Kristen Stewart, which was released on 31 January 2025. Next, he will be seen in the highly anticipated sci-fi black comedy Mickey 17, starring Robert Pattinson, which is slated for a March 2025 release.
With a storied career like this, how much is Yeun worth?
Steven Yeun’s net worth and assets
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According to Celebrity Net Worth, Steven Yeun’s net worth is USD 5 million. A big chunk of his net worth is a result of his income from acting and producing.
With his significant earnings, Yeun has also invested in luxury assets. He owns a 3,600 square feet mid-century residential property in Pasadena which he bought for USD 3.3 million in 2020. The house features three bedrooms and bathrooms along with a courtyard garden that features stunning accents. With high walls, French doors and a vine-covered porch, the property is every homeowner’s dream.
His previous residence in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles cost USD 2.3 million. Furthermore, Yeun co-owns an 800-square-foot loft in the Downtown area.
Yeun was also an investor in The Bun Shop, a restaurant in Los Angeles’ Koreatown run by his brother Brian Yeun, and chef James Seok. However, it has closed down.
To understand Yeun’s net worth and achievements better, let’s take a look at his journey and career trajectory.
Steven Yeun’s impressive career highlights
His early life and breakout role
With humble beginnings, Yeun’s early childhood was spent moving around. The son of an architect, he was born in Seoul, Korea before his family migrated to Canada and then to the US where they finally settled in Troy, Michigan.
Describing his immigrant experience in an interview with AnOther, Yeun mentioned, “I always felt kind of unseen, and like the way I needed to carry myself was inherently inauthentic, because I was just trying to survive and fit in with America.”
After getting his bachelor’s degree in 2005 from Kalamazoo College, Yeun moved to Chicago much to his parent’s disapproval and joined an improv club. He lived in Chicago for some years before moving to Los Angeles in 2009.
In L.A., Yeun secured his breakthrough role in the horror TV series, The Walking Dead. He played the role of Glenn Rhee till 2016 while also doing cameos in multiple shows like Law & Order: LA (2010-2011) and Warehouse 13 (2009- 2014). Apart from career growth, the show also significantly added to his net worth.
How much was Steven Yeun’s salary per episode for The Walking Dead?
During its run, The Walking Dead (2010-2022) became the highest-rated cable series outperforming every other show. This success of the horror series was largely attributed to the main cast, of which Steven Yeun was a big part.
According to Variety, “Although the show features a large ensemble cast, Yeun was a major part of that success with the character Glenn morphing from a plucky young member of the show’s central group to a bona fide action hero and sex symbol.”
And because he was such a major contributor towards the show’s success, Yeun was one of the top cast members with a great salary. Forbes estimated Yeun’s salary per episode of The Walking Dead (2010-2022) to be USD 60,000, right next to Norman Reedus, who played Daryl Dixon, whose salary was estimated to be USD 80,000.
However, after season 7 premiered, Yeun left the show, smartly manoeuvring into the movies that accelerated his career growth.
Films and other prominent projects: Minari, Beef and more
In 2017, Yeun starred in the horror movie Mayhem, followed by acclaimed Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s Okja which competed at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival and later had its OTT release on Netflix.
Diverting from the mainstream American film industry, the following year, Yeun starred in the South Korean movie Burning (2018), which premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and got Yeun many accolades as Best Supporting Actor. These included the Toronto Film Critics Association Awards 2018, the 2018 National Society of Film Critics Awards and the Florida Film Critics Circle Awards 2018.
However, it was in the 2020s that Yeun’s film career took off rapidly. He not only started acting in prestigious projects but also dipped a toe into producing movies, starting with A24’s Minari (2020) which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and got Yeun his very first Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Minari tells the story of a Korean-American family that moves to a small Arkansas farm in hopes of better future prospects.
While his exact salary for this role is not known, the film raked in over USD 15 million in worldwide collections. This indicates he must have taken home a big share of the pie as actor-executive producer.
The years following were full of various successes for Yeun. In 2021, he acted in The Humans (2021) and the year after, in Jordan Peele’s Nope (2022) which made USD 171.4 million globally. Given its huge box-office collection, Yeun is expected to have made a whopping salary from this role.
Yeun’s second round as producer started in 2023 with Netflix and A24’s black comedy Beef (2023- ) in which he played the role of Danny Cho, a struggling contractor who gets in a road rage incident with Amy Lau (played by Ali Wong). Yeun’s performance as Cho won him an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe for Best Actor.
In 2025, Yeun paired up with Kristen Stewart in the post-apocalyptic romance sci-fi movie, Love Me. The film is set in a distant dystopian future after the extinction of human civilisation when a buoy and a satellite fall in love.
The film premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and so far, has made USD 343, 928 worldwide.
He will also be reuniting with his Okja director Bong for Mickey 17, an adaptation of the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Ashton Edward, slated for a March 2025 release.
Personal Life
In 2016, Steven Yeun married Joana Pak, a photographer with whom he now shares two children — a son named Jude Malcolm (born in 2017) and a daughter (born in 2019).
The actor and the photographer were introduced by a mutual friend in Chicago. He was working with the Second City comedy theatre in Chicago then, and Pak was a student at Columbia College. They reconnected after a chance run-in a year later and began dating in 2009.
“She walked into the bar where I was a really sh*tty bartender, and it was kismet. After that, I saw her every day for six months,” he told Martha Stewart Weddings.
Hero and Feature images: Courtesy of IMDb/Steven Yeun Photo by courtesy of Netflix – © Netflix