Chiikawa Out-Earned All Korean Films Combined in a Week

Chiikawa the Movie took 29.8% of Korea's box office revenue in week 44 (Oct. 26–Nov. 1), above 116 Korean films combined (28.7%). Admissions went the other way.

On Sunday, Nov. 1, a single film accounted for 35.0% of South Korea's box office revenue. It was "Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of the Mermaid Island," No. 1 on the Nov. 1 daily box office chart of the Korean Box Office Information System (KOBIS), the Korean Film Council's ticketing network. Its cumulative admissions reached 2,583,855 that day, passing 2.5 million. Counting the Sept. 30 opening as day one, that's day 33 (PRISM calculation). Add up the revenue of all 42 Korean films playing that day, and they come to 21.7% of the total (PRISM calculation).

Stretch the window to a full week and the revenue order holds. On KOBIS's weekly box office chart for week 44 (Oct. 26–Nov. 1), Chiikawa ranked No. 1 with a 29.8% revenue share. Filter the same week's chart to "Korea" as the representative nationality, and the 116 Korean films on it add up to 28.7% of the total (PRISM calculation). That's about 3.42 billion won for Chiikawa and about 3.3 billion won for Korean films combined (PRISM calculation). Count admissions instead, and the order flips. Korean films combined drew 338,849 moviegoers, 3,036 more than Chiikawa's 335,813 (PRISM calculation). On revenue, Chiikawa alone came out ahead; on admissions, the Korean films combined did.

Across all theaters that week, foreign films (everything outside the Korean total) took 71.3% of week-44 revenue (PRISM calculation). The combined Korean revenue share stood at 58.0% in week 40, when Chiikawa opened, and at 28.7% in week 44 (PRISM calculation).

Chiikawa placed second in its opening week, week 40, and again in week 41. Both weeks, the No. 1 spot went to the Korean film "The Assassin(s)." Chiikawa took the top spot in week 42 and held it through week 44, three straight weeks at No. 1 on the weekly chart.

Table 1. KOBIS weekly revenue and revenue share (weeks 40–44)

Week	Dates	Chiikawa rank	Chiikawa revenue (won)	Chiikawa revenue share	Korean films combined revenue (won, PRISM calculation)	Korean films combined revenue share (PRISM calculation)
Week 40	Sept. 28–Oct. 4	No. 2	5,978,399,900	22.0%	15,786,297,530	58.0%
Week 41	Oct. 5–Oct. 11	No. 2	6,967,450,150	26.9%	13,175,084,129	50.9%
Week 42	Oct. 12–Oct. 18	No. 1	5,524,395,470	37.9%	5,286,809,730	36.3%
Week 43	Oct. 19–Oct. 25	No. 1	4,312,045,330	37.3%	4,400,903,190	38.1%
Week 44	Oct. 26–Nov. 1	No. 1	3,422,449,550	29.8%	3,302,644,040	28.7%

Chiikawa on its own outgrossed the Korean total in two weeks: week 42 and week 44. In week 42 it came out 237,585,740 won ahead. In week 43 it fell just short, trailing by 88,857,860 won (PRISM calculation).

The week-44 reversal came as both numbers fell. Chiikawa's revenue share slipped from 37.3% to 29.8%, and the Korean total's from 38.1% to 28.7%. Second place in week 44 went to "Heart of the Beast" (18.4%), a foreign film that opened Oct. 28. The highest-ranked Korean film, "The Assassin(s)" at No. 3, took 709,623,120 won, or 6.2% of the total.

In that same week 44, revenue per admission came to about 10,192 won for Chiikawa and about 9,747 won for Korean films combined (PRISM calculation). That's the arithmetic behind the split between the revenue and admissions rankings.

Japan and Taiwan Opened in Late July, Korea on Sept. 30

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The film opened in Japan on July 24, in Taiwan on July 31 and in South Korea on Sept. 30. Its Japanese distributor is Toho. In a Sept. 21 notice, the film's official site announced that box office revenue had passed 15.84 billion yen in the first 59 days of release (July 24–Sept. 20). The official notice gives no admissions figure. The 10.857 million admissions for the same point comes from a Real Sound report.

In Taiwan, the film had limited advance screenings on July 25 and 26 before its official release on July 31 (per a July 28 NOWnews report). Taiwan's Liberty Times reported on Aug. 17 that the film's Taiwan box office had passed NT$100 million the previous day.

Table 2. Cumulative figures in three markets (each as of a different date)

Market	Release date	As of	Cumulative figure	Source
South Korea	Sept. 30, 2026	Nov. 1 (day 33)	2,583,855 admissions	KOBIS (primary source)
Japan	July 24, 2026	Sept. 20 (day 59 of release)	15.84 billion yen gross / 10.857 million admissions	Gross: official site (primary source); admissions: Real Sound report
Taiwan	July 31, 2026 (limited advance screenings July 25–26)	Aug. 16	Box office passed NT$100 million / admissions unknown	Liberty Times and NOWnews reports

The film was still playing in Japan in late October. On Kogyo Tsushin's weekend attendance ranking, it placed second for the Oct. 23–25 weekend. That was its 14th week in Japanese release; the weekend before, it had ranked seventh. The following weekend, Oct. 30–Nov. 1, its 15th week, it ranked fifth.

The Korean Film Council (KOFIC) webzine covers this run through chart positions and market share by nationality. Part of one subheading in its "week 3 of October" issue read, "'Chiikawa the Movie' takes No. 1 in a late climb" (PRISM translation). The "week 4 of October" issue ran the subheading "Admissions keep falling, to 1.14 million; foreign films lead for a second straight week with a 60.9% share" (PRISM translation). The webzine's "weeks 3 and 4 of October" correspond to KOBIS weeks 42 and 43 (Oct. 12–25), and its shares are based on admissions (they match KOBIS admissions totals). On the same admissions basis, the foreign-film share for KOBIS week 44 is 70.2% (PRISM calculation). The 71.3% cited earlier is that week's revenue share.

KOBIS's film information page lists the movie's nationality as Japan. That's why Chiikawa counts toward the foreign-film share in nationality tables. It was imported by Daewon Media and distributed by CJ ENM.

Japan's official site frames the film by its rank among 2026 releases in Japan. The Sept. 21 notice carries the headline "No. 1 in the 2026 Release Box Office Ranking! (Kogyo Tsushin survey)" (PRISM translation). The body text reads, "We have recorded No. 1 in the box office ranking of 2026 releases!" (PRISM translation).

PRISM Insight

"Trend Connection"

Same week a year earlier: Korean films' admissions share moved within one week

The same slot on last year's calendar is the week of Oct. 27–Nov. 2, 2025 (labeled "week 4 of October" in the webzine; the dates are PRISM's judgment, based on the publication date and the webzine's "opening week" wording). The Korean Film Council webzine said of that week, "Amid the strength of Japanese animation, the resilience of Korean films also stood out" (PRISM translation). That week's No. 1 was the Korean film "The First Ride," which opened Oct. 29 and drew 360,000 admissions and 3.3 billion won in its opening week. At No. 2, "Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc" had reached 2.79 million cumulative admissions; at No. 5, "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle" stood at 5.57 million.

Korean films' admissions share that week was 44.4%. In the same webzine's table of the latest four weeks, the week before stood at 27.8%. The webzine wrote that Korean films "showed a rebound for the first time in a while" (PRISM translation). As background, it wrote that "the strong showing of independent films in the upper ranks and the even performance of new releases had a positive effect" (PRISM translation).

On the same admissions basis, the combined Korean-film share for this year's KOBIS week 44 (Oct. 26–Nov. 1) is 29.8% (PRISM calculation). It's the same figure as Chiikawa's revenue share, measured on a different basis. It sits below the 44.4% the webzine recorded for the same week a year earlier (Oct. 27–Nov. 2, 2025) and above the 27.8% of the week before that. Back then, Korean films' admissions share moved by about 16.6 percentage points (the webzine's figure) in a single week. This year, it also moved within one week, from 39.1% in week 43 (Oct. 19–25) to 29.8% in week 44 (PRISM calculation).

How We Counted

This article reflects KOBIS data retrieved at 4:51 p.m. KST on Nov. 2, 2026. KOBIS figures may be revised later. The Korean-film total is a PRISM calculation that adds up every row of KOBIS's table filtered to "Korea" as the representative nationality. Dividing Chiikawa's revenue by the total revenue summed the same way matches the share KOBIS displays. Shares not otherwise specified are by revenue. We couldn't confirm why revenue per admission differs, or how many admissions the film drew in Taiwan.

What to Watch Next

Nov. 5 (Thu.) "Detective Conan: The Counterfeit Case of Ultra 30" opens (per the KOBIS listing). Paid previews had drawn 2,794 admissions as of Nov. 1.
Kogyo Tsushin's Nov. 6–8 weekend ranking Chiikawa's rank in its 16th week of Japanese release.
KOBIS week 45 (Nov. 2–8) weekly figures We'll check, using the same method, where Chiikawa's revenue and the Korean-film total land in the week Conan opens.