Among the Most Frequent in the World Surpassing the US and France
In 2015, Korea was among the countries with the most frequent theater visits. The number of people to visit the theater last year is 217.29 million, which is the all time record, being 1% higher than the previous year.
The average number of visits to the theater per person is 4.22 annually. According to the 2014 report by IHS, a global industry information research institute, the average number of annual visits to the theater per person is 4.0 in Iceland, 3.9 in Singapore, 3.6 in the States and 3.1 in France.
The number of domestic viewers has been increasing since 200 million in 2013 and going over 200 million in 3 successive years. The number of viewers for Korean films in 2015 is 112.93 million, which takes up 52% in the entire market. It is 4.9% higher than the previous year, which means the number of domestic viewers for Korean films has hit 100 million for 4 years in a row. The number of viewers in Korea for foreign films has decreased 2.8% to 104.36 million.
The ticket sales in 2015 has increased 3.1% to USD 14.24 billion. It owes to the fact that, since the average ticket price has increased as the flexible pricing system at multiplexes has become common, the ticket sales has increased more than the number of film viewers.
The ticket sales has increased 7.2% to USD 714.3 million for Korean films. Last year Korean cinema showed a great performance in the box office, including three 10-million-viewer films, which are
Ode to My Father,
Assassination and
Veteran.