[Culture Op-Ed] South Korea, No. 1 in Per Capita Moviegoing: A Nation of Film Buffs?

Judging by the indicators alone, it almost seems strange to raise any objection at all. According to the “2019 Korean Film Industry Settlement Report” released by the Korean Film Council last February, total theater attendance last year reached 226.68 million, up 4.8% from the previous year and a new all-time high. Revenue also hit a record high of 1.9241 trillion won, up 5.5% year on year.

What deserves even more attention is Korea’s average annual moviegoing frequency per capita. It was tallied at no less than 4.37 times. That surpassed Iceland’s 4.2 and put Korea in first place in the world. Even the United States, often called the “mecca of film,” hovers at just 4.0–4.2 theater visits per person annually. One can hardly avoid calling it the country of the world’s greatest movie fans.

Thanks to this extraordinary public enthusiasm, the Korean film market rose in 2019 to become the world’s 4th-largest market after North America (the U.S. + Canada), China, and Japan. North America stood at $11.4 billion, China at $9.3 billion, Japan at $2.4 billion, while Korea, the UK, France, and India have for several years been jostling back and forth in the $1.5–1.7 billion range. Behind them come Germany, Mexico, and Russia, forming the world’s top 10 film markets. And among them, Korea has the smallest population. Thanks to its overwhelmingly high average annual per-capita moviegoing rate, it has managed to become the world’s 4th-largest market despite its small population.

Yet the image of Korea as “the country of the world’s greatest movie fans” is now, amid the COVID-19 crisis, revealing a “true face” it had rarely shown before. Let us look at the situation one step at a time.

A bizarre market environment in which more than 75% of total film revenue comes from theaters

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the Korean film industry has in effect faced the threat of collapse. With fear of enclosed spaces devastating the theater business, that is hardly surprising. The same is true worldwide. In response, film markets such as the United States have been shifting film releases toward web-based OTT platforms such as Netflix and Hulu. “Trolls World Tour,” for example, was released on OTT at the same time as its theatrical debut, and hit titles still in theaters, such as “The Invisible Man,” quickly ended their theatrical runs and headed straight to OTT to recoup revenue.

Of course, the same trend has appeared in Korea as well. The three IPTV providers—KT, SK Broadband, and LG Uplus—together with Home Choice, which handles cable TV VOD services, have been making new films whose theatrical releases were canceled or postponed due to COVID-19 available on VOD from the same day as their theatrical release so audiences can watch them at home. Starting with the Hollywood film “Bloodshot” on May 21, “Somewhere in Between” on May 29, and “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” on June 10 were also scheduled for release via IPTV and digital cable TV.

But expectations in the Korean film industry are nowhere near as high as in the United States. The reason is simple: in Korea, theaters are the absolute center of the film industry. According to the Korean Film Council, as of last year theater revenue accounted for a staggering 76.3% of total revenue in the Korean film industry. In Korea, the theater share has consistently hovered around 75%. The rest is filled out by the home media secondary market, overseas exports, and the like.

By contrast, in the United States, as early as the beginning of the 1990s, the secondary film market—driven by VCRs and similar media—began to surpass the primary theatrical market, and the gap has only widened since then. The situation is not very different in other countries either. Among countries with per-capita GDP above $30,000, where consumers have enough purchasing power to support secondary-market film consumption, there is no film industry in which theater revenue accounts for such an outsized share as it does in Korea.

And that global ranking of film market size mentioned earlier actually counts only the size of the primary market through theaters. If one were to include the secondary market, which is much harder to capture because media are so broadly dispersed, and even the tertiary market involving related merchandise such as toys, the rankings could change completely. The prevailing expectation is that Korea would not be 4th; it might not even make the top 15. In other words, it would rank even lower than its GDP ranking.

That is why, no matter how much web-based platforms step in to help, the film industry does not expect much from them. When a slice accounting for more than 75% of total revenue disappears all at once, there is simply no way to compensate for it. The conditions are entirely different from those in the United States, where a significant share of revenue can still be recovered through OTT releases such as Netflix. The conclusion is that Korea is merely a film market that likes “watching movies in theaters”; it is not a place where people are attached to film as a genre itself and eagerly consume it across whatever medium is available.

An unusual atmosphere in which even the movie-maniac segment is too thin for a secondary market to take hold

There is another example. According to Korean Film Council figures released on May 1, total theater attendance for the month of May came to about 1.52 million. In May of last year, total attendance was 18.06 million, meaning it had shrunk to just one-twelfth of the previous year’s level. Of course, much of this is because the COVID-19 crisis caused all promising major releases to suspend their release plans, so there were, as people say, “no movies to watch.” But even in February, when strong releases were still lined up, total attendance was only about one-eighth of the figure from the same month the year before.

Most importantly, this happened even though major theater chains such as CGV had not shut down the way their American counterparts did. Movies were still playing; the public simply did not go. So it is worth comparing this with the situation in the United States, where annual per-capita moviegoing is lower than in Korea, just before major theater chains such as AMC shut down. In the U.S., attendance was down to around 50–60% of the previous year’s level—roughly cut in half. It had not collapsed to one-eighth as in Korea. That in turn means that even under such conditions, Korea has far fewer die-hard moviegoers who still go to theaters “despite everything.”

Looking back, there has always been reason to question whether the Korean public is really all that attached to film as a genre. A representative example is the spectacular failure in the early 1990s of sell-through videos—that is, videos sold for ownership rather than rental—which were attempted on the back of the explosive spread of home VCRs in the 1980s. In countries with a certain standard of living, it is normal for a fan base to naturally emerge that sees favorite films or animations as worth owning, and for the sell-through video market to become as active as the ordinary rental market. But strangely, in Korea, people merely rented for one-time viewing and did not try to own films.

The sell-through video business, led at the time by Daewoo Video, folded before the mid-1990s, and this atmosphere did not change much even after secondary-market media shifted to DVDs in the late 1990s. In fact, the DVD sell-through market failed even more spectacularly, producing the bizarre sight of DVDs of films that had ranked in the annual top 10 at the box office selling fewer than 100 copies over an entire year after release.

This is evidence that Korea has relatively few movie maniacs, and even among the broader public, not many people feel attachment to film as a genre in itself. Yet Korea still ranks first in the world in annual moviegoing frequency per capita. What kind of market atmosphere does such a bizarre landscape reveal?

In Korea, watching movies is simply an outdoor leisure activity chosen because it is the cheapest and longest-lasting option

From several angles, the analysis is that for Koreans, moviegoing is in practical terms chosen because it is “the outdoor leisure activity that can be enjoyed the longest for the lowest price.” That is all. And it was around the time of the 1997 IMF foreign exchange crisis that this aspect became pronounced and moviegoing itself began to surge rapidly. The arrival of major conglomerate multiplex chains around the same time certainly helped people perceive moviegoing as a more comfortable leisure activity, but the sharp rise in attendance from 1998 to 2000 is especially meaningful because it came before multiplexes had fully spread in earnest.

In a similar vein, one can think of the revival of comic-book cafés, that is, the old comic rental rooms. Since comics are a genre that depends more heavily on personal taste than film, they did not establish themselves as a representative leisure activity to the same extent as movies. Still, whenever economic downturns hit—especially when youth unemployment accelerates—they inevitably make a comeback.

“Real income has declined, but recession-type consumption is emerging in the midst of a recessionary surplus created by cutting spending even further, with people trying to save even 1,000 won. Around university districts, spaces are appearing for people in their 20s trying to save every penny. Recently, the once dingy comic rental room has become a comic café where couples can spend time without spending much money, drawing attention. (Omitted) Comic rental rooms, whose number was estimated to have peaked at around 12,000 nationwide at the end of 1996, had continued to decline to just 3,638 as of 2012, but are now regaining their former glory as franchise operators such as Nolsoop, Cartoon Gonggam, Beoltoon, and Café De Comics increase in number.”

(From the Asia Economy article dated June 1, 2016, “Comic Rental Rooms Reviving in a Recession… A New Leisure Trend Among Young People”)

Meanwhile, that article contains one more interesting passage:

“About 80% of customers are couples. If they get a discount through social commerce, even two people can stay in a comic café for over two hours for under 10,000 won, reading comics and drinking beverages, which draws people in.”

Moviegoing in theaters is in fact consumed in much the same context. According to the CGV Research Center, in 2017 the share of “solo moviegoing,” that is, one-person viewers, was only 16.9% of the total. Even after rising significantly over several years, that was all it amounted to. The overwhelming majority were two-person viewings—consumed, in other words, as date movies.

In the end, mainstream leisure for Koreans is not solitary, enthusiast-type leisure, but leisure subordinate to “relationships.” One could even say that in Korean society, relationships between people are paramount, and not just leisure but virtually all activities revolve around them.

Movies fit that pattern exactly. They are merely chosen as the most “accessible” outdoor leisure enjoyed together within human relationships—the outdoor leisure that can be enjoyed the longest for the cheapest price. They have absolutely not established themselves as an indispensable hobby element for individuals in and of themselves. That is why the distorted structure emerges in which 76.3% of total revenue comes from theaters, and why the layer of enthusiasts who still go “despite everything” remains so thin.

In that sense, Korea is absolutely not some “country of movie buffs.” It is closer to being simply “a country that goes to theaters a lot.” In one sense, one could even say that people watch movies in order to go to theaters, rather than go to theaters in order to watch movies.

Not “a country of movie buffs,” but simply “a country that enjoys outings to the theater”

Finally, let us consider this question: if inexpensive, long-lasting outdoor leisure that can also take place within “relationships” is not limited to theatergoing, why did movies stand out enough for Korea to rank first in the world in annual per-capita attendance? Interestingly, the field of education has at times offered an answer. Consider a July 2004 column in the Monthly Education Journal by education critic Changseok Oh.

“Korean young people’s dating course is the same whether they are in their teens, 20s, or 30s: meal, coffee, movie. These days maybe karaoke gets added too. And that course is repeated with only the order changed. Why are they so clumsy and uniform when it comes to ‘having fun’? Because that is all they have ever done. Having gone through their teens and 20s with everything focused on school grades, they could not develop proper hobbies. If they tried to build even a simple machine at home, they would be scolded, and even if they were just reading a novel they would often be reproached for not studying and wasting time. These days, many children cannot even swim or ride a bicycle.

So even after they grow up, all they do is watch movies and dramas, where they can just sit still and stare blankly, and then go to karaoke to sing songs they have heard on TV music programs. They have no diverse hobbies. And because they have no diverse hobbies, they rarely meet people through such hobbies. In the end, it becomes meal, coffee, movie over and over again.”

Meanwhile, cultural critic Seunggu Hong offers an even more interesting perspective based on his experience studying in France.

“In Korea, the theater business and the food-service business do excessively well. What supports them are unmarried men and women in their 20s and 30s. A considerable portion of consumption takes place as part of dating. In the case of food service, if you include drinking establishments, same-sex friends go often as well. But in the United States or Europe, at least, the atmosphere is different. Once a man and a woman begin dating, ‘indoor’ dates increase sharply. They go to the home where one of them lives and spend time there. In Korea, if you bring this up, people immediately think of something sexual like ‘Want to come in for ramen?’ but in reality there are many things to do at home. You can watch movies at home, and you can make meals at home.

By contrast, Korea still has a culture in which parents live with their children until marriage. If school or work is within commuting distance from home, they absolutely do not leave their parents’ house. The United States and Europe are different. Most people become independent as soon as possible once they are adults. In Korea, that does not happen, so people cannot date at home and it is also inconvenient to invite friends over and hang out. That is why the theater business and food-service business have expanded so disproportionately in Korea. If you want to meet people and have fun, you have no choice but to go out. But once you go out, there is not much to do. People grew up in a standardized culture and do not know how to do much else. So they go to the theater because it is easy, or they go eat. Even though they are not particularly interested in those things themselves.”

This peculiar landscape—in which Korea ranks first in the world in annual moviegoing frequency per capita, yet lacks a thick layer of movie enthusiasts and channels more than three-fourths of film consumption into theaters—thus appears to be the result of many varied and complex factors coming together. People who grew up without developing many hobbies choose movies as the cheapest outdoor leisure activity that can be enjoyed the longest, and there is also a separate sociocultural environment that supports this. What is clear, at any rate, is that Korea is absolutely not “a country of movie buffs.” If someone asks, it would be better described simply as “a country that enjoys trips to the theater.” It somehow also seems to fit the old joke: “a country where books do not sell, but large bookstores are always crowded.”

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Original title: [문화칼럼] 1인당 영화관람 횟수 세계 1위 한국은 영화광들의 나라다?

Author: Mun-won Lee

Date: 2020-06-02

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=8&idx=22791