PENINSULA Dominates Box Office with 2nd Best Opening of 2020

The summer box office season in Korea opened with the debut of the year’s most significant tentpole to date, with weekend admissions soaring over 300% week-on-week and topping the one million mark for the first time in the COVID-19 era. The local industry acco...

A Triumph for Diversity Films

The Korean box office ended on a bang last year when December delivered by far the best results for Korean and overall sales for the month since records began. Some of that momentum carried through into the early weeks of 2018, but the first quarter of the yea...

PSYCHOKINESIS Falls to Earth in Rocky Launch

Weekend sales took a 15% dip as a major new release fell short of expectations, bringing admissions down to 1.96 million admissions. Despite a slow start for a local tentpole, the Korean market share remained healthy at 57%, though there was little in the way ...

KEYS TO THE HEART Rises to 1st

No new releases cracked the top five over the past weekend, which saw local titles claim back the majority share after briefly losing it last week to Hollywood. With the absence of strong new business, sales were down about 25% to 2.33 million with Korean prod...

A Good Enough Year, but the Best Year for Korean Films

Box Office Report of 2016 After five years of consecutive growth, the Korean film industry remained healthy in 2016, though the half-decade streak of gains came to an end as the industry essentially remained flat. Admissions reached 217.02 million, which was d...

Korean Cinema Casts Wide Net Overseas

Korea’s film market may have reached saturation at home but that hasn’t stopped Korea’s top film companies from continuing to find ways to grow. 2016 proved to be a landmark year for Korea’s studios outside of their home country, with several Korean-produced t...

Review of the first three quarters for 2016

After a few years of major growth at the beginning of the decade, the Korean box office has remained flat once again, with this year’s total to date staying at the same level as 2015. However, where gains have been made is in the local industry, which has chur...

OPERATION CHROMITE and TRAIN TO BUSAN Battle for Supremacy

JASON BOURNE Opens Third The biggest weekend of the year to date at the Korean box office featured two local hits vying for supremacy while a major Hollywood franchise opened well but in a distant third place. The high summer season gave local films the edge, ...

TRAIN TO BUSAN Crashes into Record Books

5.3 Million Viewers after Opening Weekend Following its bow at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, YEON Sang-ho’s live action feature debut TRAIN TO BUSAN smashed into the Korean box office, laying waste to the opening day record, when it sold 872,232...

Korea Gets a Look at NOW YOU SEE ME 2

TRAIN TO BUSAN Starts Strong in Previews The summer box office is beginning to heat up in Korea, with just over three million admissions recorded over the weekend. Hollywood maintained the edge with a 61% share ahead of the high season for local films, which w...