While 2019 saw quite a few records being broken in Korean cinemas, the COVID-19 pandemic caused the industry to come to an almost standstill in 2020. Many movie theaters were closed temporarily due to social distancing regulations and the temporary halt of various cultural activities. The decrease in both ticket sales and the supply of new films continued during the year, resulting in
dropping to 580 billion South Korean won, a roughly 70 percent decrease from 2019. In 2022, around 54 percent of all
was derived from the domestic movie productions, bolstered by multiple popular action movie releases. Correspondingly, the
that year was "The Roundup" with around 131.3 billion won in revenue.
Leading cinema chains
As of February 2023, there were 98
cinemas operating in South Korea's capital Seoul, with a total of 608
movie screens. Nearly all cinemas in South Korea are multiplex theaters
operated by one of three large cinema chains: Around half of the market is led by CGV, which is a subsidiary of CJ Corporation, followed by Lotte Cinema and Megabox. Only around 2.8 percent of ticket sales are not connected to one of these chains.
Korean film history
These days, the
South Korean film industry is evolving, and its global success is growing. After years of censorship, both during the Japanese occupation and during Park Chung-hee’s authoritarian regime, a wave of “New Korean Cinema” developed right after the Asian financial crisis of 1997. One of South Korea’s first blockbusters was
Shiri in 1999, a movie about a North Korean spy in Seoul, selling more than two million tickets in Seoul alone, a record number of that time. Thanks to
Hallyu, the Korean culture wave, the success of South Korean movies grew beyond the country’s borders. In early 2020,
Parasite by Bong Joon-ho became the first non-English movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
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