Period action feature Harbin held its lead at the South Korea box office on the first weekend of 2025, claiming 42% of ticket sales from January 3-5, while Sonic The Hedgehog 3 landed in fourth position.
Harbin added $3.2m from 483,917 admissions for a cume of $23.9m and 3.67 million admissions since its release on December 24, according to Kobis, the Korean Film Council’s box office tracking service. Directed by Woo Min-ho, the film stars Hyun Bin as an activist who plots to assassinate Ito Hirobumi, the first prime minister of Japan, in 1909.
Following the plane crash at Muan Airport on December 29, the film’s distributor CJ ENM announced cancellations in the film’s first week.
The box office performance marked a slightly slower start to the year, with overall ticket sales down by 11.5% compared to 2024.
In distant second was Firefighters, earning $847,000 in its fourth weekend for a cume of $22.7m, marking a surprising success amid production challenges and controversies.
Bogota: City of the Lost debuted with $700,000, placing it in third. Set in the 1990s, the noir thriller follows a young man who moves to Colombia in hopes of bettering his family’s lives, only to find himself deeply entrenched in Bogota’s black market. The film stars Song Joong-ki of Cannes 2023 title Hopeless alongside Lee Hee-joon from last year’s action comedy Handsome Guys.
From the US, Sonic The Hedgehog 3 debuted in fourth with $561,000 for a cume of $1.26m since its release on January 1. The first film in the Paramount Pictures franchise took $644,000 when it was released in February 2020, shortly before the pandemic lockdown, while the second instalment made $1.96m after opening in April 2022.
Korean animation Pororo: Underwater Adventure placed fifth with $490,000. It marks the latest film in the family franchise, which has also included more than 300 TV episodes. Previous instalments Pororo: Dragon Castle Adventure took more than $3m at the South Korea box office in 2022 while Pororo Popstar Adventure made $2.5m in 2023.
Japanese anime Crayon Shin-chan: Our Dinosaur Diary earned $318,000, securing sixth place and a cume of $4.1m.
Mufasa: The Lion King, prequel to Disney’s 2019 live-action remake, took seventh with $278,000 for a cume of $5.1m.
Disney animation Moana 2 followed in eighth with $254,000, bringing its cume to $21.7 m.
Rounding out the top 10 were Alex Garland’s dystopian thriller Civil War, which earned $228,000 in its first full weekend, and musical adaptation Wicked, which claimed $225,000 in its seventh weekend bringing its cume to $14.2 m.
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