The South Korea box office experienced a much needed bounce back in 2022 as it reached $937.5 Million which is up 98.5% year-t00year as top features such as ‘The Roundup’ and ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ fueled the success, according to a preliminary report from the Korean Film Council (KOFIC) (h/t ScreenDaily).
Additionally, data shows that theater attendance saw a rise of 86% to 112.8 million in 2022, compared to 2021’s total of 60.53 million, marking the first time that annual admissions have surpassed 100 million since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While that all shows a promising recovery, total receipts for 2022 are just 60.6% of pre-pandemic 2019 and admissions are at 49.8% of the 227 million tickets sold in 2019. Back in 2019 South Korea was the 4th largest box office market in the world, and a hub for film content creators to see success.
Fueling the success was ‘The Roundup’ which took $105.8m (KRW131.3bn) from 12.69 million admissions, becoming the only film to climb over the $100 million mark as well as the 10 million ticket milestone.
