COVID-19 Impact Halves April Performance Industry Revenue

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Byung-hee] Sales in the performing arts sector, including plays, musicals, classical music, opera, and dance, in April have been confirmed to have halved compared to April of last year due to the impact of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

On the 1st, the Integrated Performing Arts Information System reported that sales in the performing arts sector for April amounted to 4.67644 billion KRW. Sales in April of last year were 8.07094 billion KRW.

Due to the impact of COVID-19, sales in the performing arts sector are rapidly decreasing this year. In January, the peak season of the year, sales reached 38.68399 billion KRW, but then decreased to 21.29421 billion KRW in February and 9.12147 billion KRW in March.

By genre, musicals achieved the highest sales with 4.02081 billion KRW. Musical sales in April last year were 5.25815 billion KRW.

Play sales sharply declined to less than half, from 1.32219 billion KRW in April last year to 642.42 million KRW.

Classical music sales were 29.26 million KRW, dance sales were 1.95 million KRW, and there were no sales at all for opera and gugak (traditional Korean music) performances.

The total number of performances also shows a decreasing trend. The number of performances in April was only 2,151. January had the highest number of performances this year with 7,419, followed by 587 in February and 2,325 in March.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.