Nominal vs present value
Local display: $3.9m · Rebased to 2024 USD via US CPI-U
How the total breaks down
Club salary. Reported seven-figure wages in Chinese and Turkish leagues.
Korean endorsements. Home-market sponsors for Korea's volleyball icon.
Impact 98
- Became the reference for volleyball's modern club-salary ceiling
- Proved Asian leagues would pay football-adjacent money for a franchise outside hitter
- Made a Korean star the sport's global wage bellwether
Kim's mid-2010s packages forced every ambitious club to reconsider outside-hitter budgets. The "$1m+ club salary" era in volleyball has her name on the founding documents.
Kim Yeon-koung's 2016 peak is volleyball's wage legend: reported club packages and Korean deals stacking to roughly $3 million — the number that still defines the indoor ceiling.