Cultural Insight

[Anchor Lead]

In today's cultural news, we bring you the story of domestic comic films taking over the box office in recent days. Take a look

[Pkg]

Korean movie fans are seeing a comedy boom in the new year. A series of domestic comic films has been released week after week, to the delight of fun-seekers. Their good performances on the box office are also leading to expectations about a revival of comic movies. One of them is "Inside Me," which opened on January ninth but drew little attention at first. However, it has climbed to No.2 on the box office chart and accumulated over 1.5 million viewers, thanks to positive reviews that it was better than expected. More comic movies are coming up this month, including "Extreme Job" starring Ryu Seung-ryong and "Hit-and-Run Squad" with actors Cho Jung-seok and Kong Hyo-jin. Movie industry insiders attributed the trend to audiences possibly getting tired of blockbusters, which have dominated the big screen since last autumn. They predicted that fun-packed comic movies will continue to enjoy popularity for the time being. TVXQ!'s agency has said that the duo's concert tour in Japan came to an end on January 20 with the final concert in Osaka. Starting last September, TVXQ! gave concerts in ten regions of Japan, including Saitama and Fukuoka. TVXQ!'s agency said that the duo's 33 concerts attracted a combined number of 680,000 people, or 20,000 people per concert on average, attesting to TVXQ!'s unrivaled popularity in Japan. TVXQ!'s three concerts in Osaka were held at the Kyocera Dome, one of the largest concert halls in Japan. Sources say the concerts featured an extravagant stage setting and were a huge success. Last year, TVXQ! attracted the largest number of concert-goers in Japan, beating even Japanese artists.