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The supernatural horror film 'Salmokji: Whispering Water' has dominated the South Korean box office since its release, setting records and surpassing major milestones. The film's success is attributed to its unique plot and filming location, with sources from Yonhap News providing detailed box office data.
SEOUL - The supernatural horror film "Salmokji: Whispering Water" has taken the South Korean box office by storm, leading the weekend charts and setting new records since its premiere. According to data from the Korean Film Council, the film has consistently attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers each weekend, becoming a major box office phenomenon.
Coverage Comparison
Yonhap News has extensively covered the film's performance, with multiple reports chronicling its box office journey. The reports highlight the film's steady success, from its opening weekend to surpassing major milestones. All reports come from the same news agency but were published on different dates, providing a chronological view of the film's performance.
Key Claims
Record-Breaking Performance: According to Yonhap News, "Salmokji: Whispering Water" has become the most-watched Korean horror film of all time, surpassing the previous record held by "A Tale of Two Sisters" since 2003. The film achieved this milestone with 3.17 million total admissions, as reported by Yonhap News.
Box Office Numbers: The film's box office performance has been consistently strong, per Yonhap News reports. It opened with 536,454 admissions in its first weekend, bringing its total to 724,039 admissions as of that period. By late April, the film had surpassed 1 million admissions, with Yonhap News reporting a cumulative audience of 1.04 million as of the morning of April 17. The film continued its success, surpassing 3 million viewers by early May, with Yonhap News reporting 3.02 million total admissions.
Success Factors: Yonhap News attributes the film's success to its unique plot and filming location. The movie follows a filming crew led by Soo-in (Kim Hye-yoon) who travel to a location to complete a shoot within a deadline, only to find themselves sinking deeper into an inescapable, swamp-like terror. The filming took place at Salmokji, a reservoir in Yesan County, South Chungcheong Province, which is long rumored among locals to be a paranormal hotspot with a history of reported ghost sightings.
Perspectives
Box Office Competition
While "Salmokji: Whispering Water" has dominated the box office, other films have also performed well. According to Yonhap News reports, the Hollywood sci-fi "Project Hail Mary" has consistently held the second-place spot, attracting 274,733 viewers in its second weekend and maintaining a strong presence. "The King's Warden" also performed well, with 175,342 viewers and a cumulative total of 16.39 million, making it the second most-viewed movie of all time in South Korea as of mid-April.
As the film continues its theatrical run, it remains to be seen whether it will continue to break records and maintain its box office reign in the coming weeks.
How this outlet told it
Yonhap News — English
Framing: Box office success — Informative
Facts Included:
Salmokji: Whispering Water led the box office
536,454 admissions from Friday to Sunday
Total audience number: 724,039
Premiered on Wednesday
Filming location: Salmokji, a reservoir in Yesan County, South Chungcheong Province
Project Hail Mary came in second with 274,733 viewers
AI-extracted; can misattribute a claim — see Methodology.
Each row is one claim, attributed to the outlet whose wording states it most clearly. Confidence rates how directly the source text states the claim — explicit and unhedged rates high; hedged, pieced-together, or internally inconsistent statements rate lower. It does not measure whether the claim is true. Status counts the distinct outlets we found asserting it — so a single-source claim can still show high confidence, and a multi-source claim can show medium. Every one of those outlets is named beside the status, so you can check the count against the list. For claims extracted before we began storing that list, the row says so: it names the outlet the claim is quoted from and states that we have not recorded which outlets backed it. Outlets wrote at different times, so a figure that evolves — a casualty count, for example — can legitimately differ between rows; check the "as of" time next to each claim's source.
Claim
Confidence
Status
ClaimSalmokji: Whispering Water led the box office, drawing over 530,000 moviegoers in its opening weekend.
ClaimThe filming location, Salmokji, is a reservoir in Yesan County, South Chungcheong Province, long rumored among locals to be a paranormal hotspot with a history of reported ghost sightings.
ClaimProject Hail Mary came in second with 274,733 viewers for the three days to push its cumulative audience past two million since its March 18 release.