Number of cinema admissions in South Korea 2004-2024
In 2024, around 123.1 million movie tickets were sold in South Korea, a significant recovery from the record low of 59.5 million movie tickets sold in 2020. The box office revenue has also shown signs of recovery, with about 1.3 trillion South Korean won in revenue. However, in both cases there was a decrease compared to the previous year.
A year of big hits
While 2019 had been a great year for South Korean cinema and movie theaters, with the beginning of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the industry was hit hard. Recovery began in 2021, and the industry continues to be centered mainly around big blockbuster movies. The biggest movie of the year was "Exhuma", a horror movie with mystery and occult elements. The most viewed foreign production was the Disney movie "Inside Out 2". American productions accounted for around 35 percent of the box office revenue that year, while domestic moves contributed about half of the total revenue. As of June 2024, "Extreme Job" was the highest-grossing domestic movie ever to be shown in South Korea, while "Avatar: The Way of Water" was the 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 January 2020 stood at around 143.7 billion won, one year later the sales revenue was only at 15.8 billion won. By December 2023 this had risen to 164.3 billion won, exceeding the January 2020 figure. The number of visitors went down from 16.8 million to just 1.8 million respectively, before recovering to around 16.7 million in December of 2023. While regular cinemas were struggling, consumers found other ways to watch movies, for example by visiting drive-in cinemas or using online streaming services.
