Domestic movies see worst sales in 8 years: report

SEOUL, Jan. 7 (Yonhap) -- Hit by the economic downturn and a deluge of foreign
films, South Korean movies saw their worst sales in eight years in 2008, a local
report said Wednesday.

Domestic movies took up 42.5 percent of the film market last year, plunging by
more than 20 percent from the previous year, according to CJ Entertainment, South
Korea's largest film distributor. The market share of domestic movies has been
steadily increasing since 2002, hitting a record-high 64.9 percent in 2006.
Only eight local movies succeeded in drawing more than 2 million viewers last
year, a sharp decrease from the 16 and 10 movies that gathered such numbers in
2006 and 2007, respectively.
The number of overall moviegoers in 2008 decreased by 5 percent from 2007 and
10.5 percent from 2006, the report added.
The Korean movie "The Good, the Bad, the Weird," which debuted at the Cannes Film
Festival and was well received by overseas audiences, drew the largest audience
of 6.8 million, while the Hollywood film "Mama Mia!" drew 4.6 million people.
hayney@yna.co.kr
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