There is undoubtedly much concern and pessimism about the state of Korea's film industry at the moment. The box office figures for 2025 provided little cause for optimism with a total of 106 million tickets sold and a local market share of 41.1 percent. The industry has contracted by about half since 2019. The lights are flashing red.

Of late there has been more discussion about the importance of holdbacks to try and help revive the industry. South Korea's president Lee Jae-Myung raised the issue at his New Year's Press conference on January 21 underscoring the level of concern there is about the state of Korean cinema. He said "overseas, they require theater-released films to wait a year before appearing on OTT, but we have no such options." A bill to enforce a minimum six-month window between a release in theaters and online is currently pending in the National Assembly. There is more here on the impact of holdbacks.

But despite the constant talk of crisis that is certainly warranted given the lack of investment in films, there are nonetheless some glimmers of hope as young people are returning to the cinemas while films with modest budgets are breaking through and specialty cinema is performing strongly. There are some parallels between now and the 1990s when the industry was trying to reconnect with viewers following years of decline. Certainly, there are differences as the Korean film industry then needed significant investment whereas today it is fully developed, and there were not streaming platforms to lure audiences away in the 1990s. Yet the need for films to engage with audiences was real then, and it is once again the challenge today to pull audiences back into the theaters.

Yellow Door: '90s Lo-fi Film Club (2023)

Is Cinephilia Returning? Film Festivals and Specialty Cinema

The 1990s saw a huge appetite in cinema. As documented in the film Yellow Door: '90s Lo-fi Film Club (2023) directors like Bong Joon Ho were part of film clubs as they discussed the work of leading auteurs like Francis Ford Coppola. They also collected films with Videotheques popping up in Seoul and elsewhere while Korea's leading film festivals: Busan, Bucheon and Jeonju all emerged between 1995 and 2000. Film magazines like Cine 21 also hit the shelves.

Encouragingly, reflecting a growing interest in films, film festivals in Korea are now attracting large numbers of people. Last year, occupancy rates at both the Jeonju International Film Festival and Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN) were over 80 percent while at the Busan International Film Festival total admissions hit 175,000 marking an increase of 20,000 from 2024. The festival also issued over 900 cinephile passes to students of film (or related programs).

The World of Love (2025)

Specialty cinema is also attracting young audiences. Yoon Ga-eun's The World of Love (2025) accrued over 200,000 tickets with 58 percent of audiences at CGV cinemas (Korea's leading cinema chain) being in their 20s and 30s. The animation Love Letter (2025) was also immensely popular with young people with 30 percent of all cinemagoers at CGV in their 20s. It is not just Korean films these audiences are watching as they are seeking out films like Sirat (2025) that has accumulated more than 60,000 admissions to date. 65 percent of CGV's viewers were aged between 20 and 39.

GV (Guest Visits) are also selling out extremely quickly as young viewers seek to learn more about the films themselves and see the talent in person. A screening of The World of Love that featured a lively discussion between Yoon Ga-eun and Bong Joon Ho in December sold out shortly after tickets went out on sale.

It's not just in Korea where young people are returning to the cinema. There are similar trends in the UK and US with Generation Z in Britain finding film and TV almost twice as influential as digital creators for shaping UK culture according to a survey by the British Council published in December 2025. The social media application Letterboxd is helping drive interest in film with 17 million users globally. In 2024 when it had 15 million users, half were aged 35 or younger with more than half of these aged between 16 and 24.

Lower Budgets

Humint (2026)

With less investment budgets have had to come down. Although there are still some expensive tentpoles, these no longer drive the industry in the way they did. Of the two films released over the lunar new year, it was The King's Warden (2026) that won the box office crown during the holiday. Tellingly its budget (10.5 billion won) is more than half of Ryoo Seung-wan's Humint (23.5 billion won) and yet The King's Warden sold 956,743 tickets compared to 491,026 for Humint during weekend February 13–15.

Over the past two years, it was films including The Ugly (2025), Handsome Guys (2024), and Noise (2024) that have struck a chord and these are titles with much lower budgets than blockbusters. It is true there is still a market for some high-profile films including The Roundup but Korean blockbusters are evidently not as popular as they were.

In the 1990s and 2000s Korean cinema attracted acclaim internationally not for its blockbusters but for its mid-sized budget genre bending titles: Oldboy (2003), Memories of Murder (2003), A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) and others though Bong Joon Ho's The Host (2006) was a notable exception. With studios having to pivot towards international markets, turning to lower budget genre films might help offset the losses in the domestic market.

Once We Were Us (2025)

Interestingly in another sign of the industry coming full circle, melodramas that were in their heyday in the 1990s and 2000s with titles like Christmas in August (1998) and A Moment to Remember (2004) are again connecting with viewers; this time Generation Z. Kim Doyoung's melodrama Once We Were Us (2025) surpassed its break-even point of 1.1m admissions and has sold more than 2.5m tickets thus far. This followed Even if This Love Disappears from the World Tonight (2025) released a week earlier that also made a profit generating more than 860,000 admissions. Both titles continue a trend of films based on existing IP. Once We Were Us is a remake of the Chinese film US and Them (2018) while Even if This Love Disappears from the World Tonight (2025) is based on a Japanese novel of the same name.

2025 was indeed a dire year for the Korean film industry, but is it possible that over the second half of this decade we will see the industry turn a corner as it did in the 1990s? We will have to wait and see.

Written by Jason Bechervaise
Edited by kofic