KOREA LOVES KOREAN MOVIES

Korea's having a bang-up movie year so far. In the past, movies breaking the million admissions mark was an indicator of success beyond everybody's wildest dreams, but now 1,000,000 tickets sold is just so-so. This year alone the undeserving ANOTHER PUBLIC ENEMY, a blah sequel to a flick I didn't like the first time around, clocked in at just under 4 million admissions, MARATHON raced to over 5 million, and at least 10 other movies broke 1 million admissions with ease. SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE has hit well over 3 million admissions and WELCOME TO DONGMAKGOL has breezed up to 5.5 million admissions and it's still going strong, with ticket sales increasing rather than decreasing every weekend. This is a pretty stellar feat for a movie that looked pretty lame when it came out.

As for American movies in Korea, MR. AND MRS. SMITH comes in at about 3.5 million admissions, WAR OF THE WORLDS comes in at about 2 million, and the only other Hollywood flick to hit the top ten is the blechy CONSTANTINE with 1.8 million admissions. There's no accounting for taste.