"Audience Numbers at Theaters This Year Hit Lowest Since Records Began, Comparable to 20-Year-Old Foreign Exchange Crisis (Comprehensive)"

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Isul] This year, due to the impact of COVID-19 (novel coronavirus), the number of movie theater audiences recorded the lowest level.

According to the Korea Film Council's Integrated Computer Network for Movie Theater Tickets, as of the 8th, the number of people who visited theaters this year was counted at 58,435,452.

Seoul City has completely suspended activities after 9 PM since the 5th as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases continuously set new records. Additionally, from midnight on the 8th until the 28th, social distancing in the metropolitan area has been uniformly raised to level 2.5, and non-metropolitan areas to level 2. Therefore, movie theaters in the metropolitan area must close by 9 PM.

The theaters are quiet. The cumulative audience number for December so far is only 350,000. Several new releases scheduled for this month, such as "Seobok" starring Gong Yoo and Park Bo-gum, and the musical film "Life is Beautiful" starring Ryu Seung-ryong and Yum Jung-ah, have all postponed their release to next year. If this continues, the audience number for this month is expected to be only 1 to 1.5 million.

Including December's audience, the annual total audience for this year is expected to be around 60 million. This is about 28% compared to last year's record-breaking 204.2 million audience.

This is the lowest record since the Korea Film Council began counting audience numbers in 2004. At that time, the total theater audience was 69.2 million. Considering that the subscription rate was half back then, the actual audience number is expected to have been higher.

Compared to before the official computer network counting, it is a similar record to about 20 years ago, with 54.7 million in 1999 right after the IMF financial crisis and 64.6 million in 2000.

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