'Pamyo' Solo Success Boosts February Theater Revenue by 60.1%

75.8% Recovery Before Pandemic... Lunar New Year Movies 'Sluggish'

The movie 'Pamyo' performed well at the box office, significantly increasing the revenue of Korean films last month.

According to the 'February 2024 Korean Film Industry Settlement Report' released by the Korean Film Council on the 19th, the total revenue last month was 110.5 billion KRW, recovering to 75.8% of the February average from 2017 to 2019 (pre-pandemic) which was 145.8 billion KRW. This represents a 60.1% (41.5 billion KRW) increase compared to the same month last year. The number of viewers in February was 11.46 million, showing 64.8% of the pre-pandemic average (17.67 million), and increased by 78.4% (5.04 million) compared to the same month last year.

Exterior view of a theater in downtown Seoul
[Photo by Yonhap News]

'Pamyo' ranked first in February box office with revenue of 35.1 billion KRW (3.7 million viewers). 'Simin Deokhui' ranked third with revenue of 10 billion KRW (1.04 million viewers), and the documentary 'Geonguk Jeonjaeng' ranked fourth with revenue of 9.6 billion KRW (1.03 million viewers). Ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, the movies 'Dog Days' and 'Dead Man', which were released on the 7th of last month, earned 3.5 billion KRW (360,000 viewers) and 2.3 billion KRW (240,000 viewers) respectively. The low-budget film 'Sopung' earned 2.8 billion KRW (310,000 viewers), ranking first among independent and art films.

Korean film revenue was 66.2 billion KRW, reaching 72.6% of the pre-pandemic February average revenue (91.1 billion KRW). This is a remarkable 392% (52.7 billion KRW) increase compared to last year. Last month, the number of viewers was 6.97 million, representing 63.1% of the pre-pandemic average (11.04 million). This is a 447.7% (5.69 million) increase compared to the same month last year. The revenue share was 59.8%, and the viewer share was 60.8%.

The total number of viewers for foreign films was 4.49 million. 'Wonka' ranked second in box office with revenue of 28.6 billion KRW (2.94 million viewers), but aside from this, there were no other hits. Last month, foreign film revenue was 44.4 billion KRW, recovering to 81.2% of the pre-pandemic average of 54.7 billion KRW, but decreased by 20.2% (11.2 billion KRW) compared to the same month last year.