Led by all-time record-breaker 'The King's Warden,' local films drove a 42 percent revenue jump A multiplex in Seoul on July 19 (Yonhap) Korean films powered the country's theatrical market to its strongest first half since the COVID-19 pandemic, with overall revenue climbing 41.9 percent year over year, according to figures released Tuesday by the Korean Film Council.Theaters grossed 579 billion won ($399 million) from 57 million admissions between January and June, both sharply up from the same stretch last year.Homegrown titles led the charge. Korean films took in 370.2 billion won on 37.4 million ticket sales, up 81.7 percent from a year earlier and the best first-half showing for local fare since the pandemic, recovering to 94.2 percent of the 2017-2019 average.Much of that rebound traces back to the record-breaking run of a single film. "The King's Warden," Jang Hang-jun's Joseon-era period drama about the final months of the deposed King Danjong, grossed 163.1 billion won from 16.9 million ticket sales through June, becoming the highest-grossing Korean film of all time.The film is the first Korean title in two years to cross the 10 million admission mark, the traditional benchmark for megahit status, and trails only "The Admiral: Roaring Currents" (2014) on the all-time admissions chart.Two more Korean films rounded out the top three by revenue. Yeon Sang-ho's zombie thriller "Colony," which premiered in the Midnight Screenings section at Cannes in May, finished second with 60.5 billion won, and "Salmokji: Whispering Water," a low-budget horror film about a haunted rural reservoir, placed third with 33.3 billion won.Foreign films sold fewer tickets than a year earlier, though total revenue inched up 2.3 percent to 208.8 billion won on the strength of premium formats, which typically run 40 to 50 percent more than a standard ticket."Project Hail Mary" drew 30.2 percent of its Korean gross from IMAX and other premium screens, while "Avatar: Fire and Ash" pulled in nearly half of its total sales from those formats.The premium-format surge was not limited to Hollywood blockbusters. Across all releases, premium screenings brought in 45.7 billion won over the six months, up 56.3 percent from 2025.The biggest winner of the half was local distributor Showbox, which landed hits with all four of the films it had in theaters over the period — "The King's Warden," "Colony," "Salmokji" and the holdover romance "Once We Were Us," which opened in late December. The company led all distributors with a total gross of 281.4 billion won, a 48.6 percent share of the market.Kane Parsons' "Backrooms," the A24 horror film adapted from the director's viral YouTube series, topped the independent and arthouse chart with 12.4 billion won and 1.2 million admissions, following a record-setting theatrical run in North America.