Number of cinema admissions in South Korea 2004-2019
In 2019, a record number of around 226.7 million movie tickets were sold in South Korea, an increase of around 4.8 percent compared to the previous year. The box office revenue showed an increase of around 5.5 percent in the same period, resulting in a revenue of around 1.91 trillion South Korean won.
A year of big hits
All in all, 2019 was a great year for South Korean cinemas. The market tends to focus more and more around big blockbuster movies. The biggest movie of that year was the South Korean movie Extreme Job, which had around 16.3 million viewers, followed by international hits Avengers: Endgame and Frozen 2, with 13.9 million and 13.4 million viewers respectively. Domestic productions accounted for around half of the box office revenue that year, with big hits like Extreme Job and Oscar-winning movie Parasite. As of November 2019, Extreme Job was the highest grossing domestic movie ever to be shown in South Korea, while Avengers: Endgame was the second highest grossing foreign movie.
Cinemas and COVID-19
After the huge success in 2019, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) slowed ticket sales immensely. While the ticket sales revenue in February 2019 was at around 190 billion won, one year later the sales revenue was at only 62.3 billion won. The number of visitors went down from 22.3 million to 7.4 million respectively. While regular cinemas are struggling, consumers find other ways to watch movies, for example by visiting drive-in cinemas.
A year of big hits
All in all, 2019 was a great year for South Korean cinemas. The market tends to focus more and more around big blockbuster movies. The biggest movie of that year was the South Korean movie Extreme Job, which had around 16.3 million viewers, followed by international hits Avengers: Endgame and Frozen 2, with 13.9 million and 13.4 million viewers respectively. Domestic productions accounted for around half of the box office revenue that year, with big hits like Extreme Job and Oscar-winning movie Parasite. As of November 2019, Extreme Job was the highest grossing domestic movie ever to be shown in South Korea, while Avengers: Endgame was the second highest grossing foreign movie.
Cinemas and COVID-19
After the huge success in 2019, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) slowed ticket sales immensely. While the ticket sales revenue in February 2019 was at around 190 billion won, one year later the sales revenue was at only 62.3 billion won. The number of visitors went down from 22.3 million to 7.4 million respectively. While regular cinemas are struggling, consumers find other ways to watch movies, for example by visiting drive-in cinemas.
