Battle of December, Three-Way Showdown

With a few presumed hits coming up short and lower-than-usual attendance at some points of the year, particularly early summer, a lot was banking on December to pick up the slack and close the year on a high note. The end-of-year period (late December and earl...

STEEL RAIN Pours on THE LAST JEDI’s Parade

The end of year period began with a bang in Korea, but not the way it did in the rest of the world as Disney’s latest Star Wars installment failed to top the market, despite record openings elsewhere. Sales were up over 30% week-on-week to 2.5 million admissio...

Stranger Than Fiction: Politics & History Inspire Cinema

The Korean box office has had a rocky ride through the first two trimesters of 2017, but this period was not without its success stories. Though controversies and an uneven slate of films presented some obstacles, Korean history remained a strong driver for pr...

A TAXI DRIVER Rides Into 10 Million Viewer Club

Buckets of rain came down on Korea over the weekend but the stream of crowds heading to theaters remained unabated as admissions stood at a healthy 3.57 million. Korean films remained strong as a pair of dominant holdovers and some new releases contributed to ...

A TAXI DRIVER Fills Up 3rd Best Korean Opening of All Time

August kicked off with the biggest weekend of the year at the Korean box office this year, with new local offering A Taxi Driver entering the record books on top of several major holdovers. Korean films made up 79% of the 4.62 million tickets sold. JANG Hun’s ...

SPLIT Unseats NEW TRIAL in Debut

Multiplexes welcomed a large amount of new releases this past weekend but with several titles dead on arrival business experienced a slight dip with 2.1 million entries recorded. Despite losing control of the top spot, local films still made up a hefty portion...

THE HIMALAYAS Rises in Xmas Weekend

Star Wars: The Force Awakens zipped past the USD 1 billion mark in record time as the world’s film markets are transfixed by its unprecedented performance, yet in Korea it remained off the top of the chart in a distant second place. Business was booming over t...

Trends and Review of 2014 Box Office

The year 2014 saw four films reach the ten million admission milestones in Korea. Among them, Roaring Currents ran fastest to the milestone, becoming Korea’s new all-time top-grossing film. Some foreign films enjoyed strong popularity in Korea although they fa...

Box Office Monthly Report | October 2014

Following the hot summer months and the Chuseok holiday, October was a soft month for cinema attendance, with no major success stories and a string a low-performing titles. There were no true breakouts but most successful was the romcom My Love My Bride, a rem...

Box Office: February 6-19, 2014

Frozen and Miss Granny are still dominating Korean cinemas in February. The Korean Film Council (KOFIC – Chairman, KIM Eui-suk) announced on the 16th that Disney’s animation Frozen and the family comedy Miss Granny by HWANG Dong-hyuk (Silenced, 2011), are stil...