South Korea’s filmmaking industry contracted for a second straight year in 2021 due mainly to the yearslong COVID-19 pandemic, government data showed.

The aggregated revenue of the local film market, which includes domestic sales of movie tickets, online releases and exports, reached 1.02 trillion won ($855 million) last year, according to data from the Korean Film Council.

It is a slight on-year decrease from the previous year’s 1.05 trillion won but marks  plunge from 2.5 trillion won tallied in the pre-pandemic year of 2019.

The total sales of movie tickets rose 14.5 percent on-year to 384.5 billion won last year, with the number of admissions edging up 1.7 percent on-year to 60.5 million. But the 2021 ticket sales accounted for 30.5 percent of those of 2019. (Yonhap)