[Courtesy of Wavve]
According to South Korea's fair trade watchdog, the domestic over-the-top (OTT) service market, estimated to stand at $1.9 billion in 2022, was led by Netflix, the world's largest OTT service operator, with a market share of 38.2 percent. Wavve stood at the No. 3 spot with a market share of 14.3 percent.
Wavve said that the company issued 1,164,700 new shares worth 25 billion won during its board meeting held on May 19 and allocated them all to SK Square America. The OTT company plans to utilize the investment as additional funding for original content production and global market expansion.
SK Square, the largest shareholder of Wavve, holds a 100 percent stake in SK Square America. With this equity increase, SK Square America's stake in Wavve increased from 1.8 percent to 3.8 percent. SK Square's stake in the domestic OTT service operator increased from 39.3 percent to 40.5 percent.
While South Korean drama content such as "Squid Game," "The Glory," and "Kingdom" garnered worldwide popularity, the drama series was released through Netflix and other South Korean OTT services find it hard to capture the hearts of global audience. Wavve is preparing to release various content through collaborations with other foreign OTT services later this year.
Park Sae-jin
Experienced journalist and editor at AJU PRESS specializing in multilingual news. I cover international diplomacy, geolpolitics, and policy, consistently delivering highly accurate, compelling reporting for a worldwide audience.
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OTT killed the cinema. Korea's hottest summer revives it
This photo provided by CJ ENM show the overview of CGV with crowd of people waiting for their movie to start SEOUL, August 10 (AJP) - South Korea’s longest summer heat wave has breathed new life into a pastime and industry nearly killed by streaming — moviegoing and theaters. For couples like Kim Soo-hyun, 29, the once-standard weekend date outdoors has become almost impossible. “It’s been really hard to go on dates on weekends because it’s so hot,” said Kim, an office worker living in southern Seoul’s Seocho district. “The car is cool and comfortable, but the moment we get out and start walking, it becomes really difficult.” She and her boyfriend gravitate toward air-conditioned mall complexes where they can eat, shop and catch a movie without stepping back into the heat. Kim’s routine reflects a broader shift playing out across South Korea’s multiplexes. This photo provided by CJ ENM show the theater with giant CGV sign welcoming visitors. The record heat has given fresh relevance to a strategy already under way at CGV, Lotte Cinema and Megabox: making theaters about more than simply watching a film. Premium seats, late-night screenings, book clubs, concerts and other alternative programming are turning cinemas into places where people can spend several hours rather than watch a movie and leave. The question is whether that can become a genuine survival strategy for an industry still struggling to recover its pre-pandemic audience — or whether this summer’s rush will disappear with the heat. A summer for the record books The weather has certainly helped. Yangsan in southeastern South Korea reached 42.5 degrees Celsius in early August, the highest temperature recorded in the country in 122 years. President Lee Jae Myung called the prolonged heat wave a “national disaster” and ordered an intensified government response. The extreme weather arrived just as cinemas were beginning to show signs of recovery. South Korean theaters drew 57.05 million admissions in the first half of 2026, up 34.2 percent from a year earlier, while box-office revenue rose to 579 billion won, according to the Korean Film Council. Yet admissions were still only 56.5 percent of the average recorded in the first halves of 2017 through 2019, showing how far the industry remains from its pre-pandemic scale. The rebound accelerated during the height of this summer’s heat. Nationwide theaters drew 5.31 million moviegoers from Aug. 3 through Aug. 9, up 69.7 percent from 3.13 million during the comparable seven-day period a year earlier, according to daily data from the Korean Film Council’s KOBIS box-office system. Revenue jumped 80.3 percent to 55.21 billion won from 30.62 billion won. But heat alone cannot explain the surge. “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” together accounted for 4.40 million admissions, or 82.9 percent of all moviegoers during the week, showing just how heavily the rebound depended on blockbuster releases. Still, moviegoers say the crowds feel different. CGV's booking app hits its queue screen as ticket-hungry fans flood in: "High simultaneous traffic — please wait." 229 people in line, 8-second estimated wait. photo captured from social media account @TheStagney at X “The site told me to wait in a queue because so many people were trying to book at once,” said Choi Min-soo, 45, an office worker from eastern Seoul’s Gangdong district who was trying to see “Spider-Man.” “It made me wonder whether the film industry was actually picking back up.” Kim also described auditoriums and ticket counters as fuller than she remembered seeing in years. She has already watched three of the summer’s major releases and plans to return for a second viewing of “The Odyssey” in IMAX. Selling the room, not just the screen CGV has been unusually explicit about selling the cinema as refuge from the heat. On July 29, South Korea’s largest multiplex operator launched a summer campaign under the slogan “When there’s a heat wave, go to CGV,” pitching theaters as places where customers can spend the summer in air-conditioned comfort. CGV's ScreenX auditorium wraps the picture across three walls, pictured here promoting Spider-Man: Brand New Day, one of the two blockbusters driving Korea's current premium-format frenzy. Courtesy of CGV The promotion, which runs through Aug. 23, also rewards repeat visits and screenings in SCREENX auditoriums. But the effort to make theaters somewhere to stay, rather than merely somewhere to watch a movie, began well before this summer. In March, CGV turned its recliner-equipped Stressless Cinema at Cine de Chef Yongsan into a two-hour book club. Participants received copies of Andy Weir’s “Project Hail Mary,” along with food and beverages, and spent the session reading inside the auditorium. CGV described it as an attempt to offer a different kind of cultural experience inside a movie theater. In June, the chain went further. During BTS concerts in Busan, CGV operated an overnight “All Movie Night” at its Asiad branch, screening concert footage and films from late at night until the following morning. The company explicitly marketed the program as a comfortable place for concertgoers to stay after the show. The diversification extends beyond CGV. Lotte Cinema sells tickets for virtual-reality concert content alongside conventional films, while Megabox operates boutique and recliner auditoriums and programs cultural content under brands including Classic Society. For Kim, who watched “The Odyssey” at a boutique auditorium inside Megabox Coex, the appeal went far beyond air conditioning. “I basically watched it lying down — it was so comfortable,” she said. The premium price did not feel excessive, she added, compared with what a couple might otherwise spend on a weekend outing. The numbers suggest more moviegoers are willing to pay for experiences they cannot reproduce at home. Revenue from IMAX, 4D, SCREENX, Dolby Cinema and other special-format screenings reached 45.7 billion won in the first half of 2026, up 56.3 percent from a year earlier. Admissions to those formats rose 49 percent to 2.85 million. The crowd files out after catching the very first IMAX screening of The Odyssey on opening day. Photo captured from @Kmmm_777 via X That growth stands out because the overall cinema audience remains far below pre-pandemic levels. Theaters are no longer simply trying to bring people back through the doors. They are trying to make each visit something streaming cannot easily replace. “I don’t know if I’d say the theater is more convenient than streaming,” Choi said. “But there’s an appeal that’s unique to the cinema.” That distinction matters because the industry’s financial pain has hardly disappeared. South Korean theaters recorded 106.09 million admissions in 2025, down 13.8 percent from a year earlier, while box-office revenue fell 12.4 percent to 1.047 trillion won. Both declined for a second straight year. The Korean Film Council nevertheless identified one bright spot: special-format revenue jumped 46.3 percent to 111 billion won, which it linked to growing demand for experience-oriented moviegoing. Even CGV’s domestic operation remained in the red early this year. Its Korean business generated 175.4 billion won in first-quarter revenue, up 36.7 percent from a year earlier, but still posted an operating loss of 6.6 billion won. Conditions are more severe at Megabox JoongAng. The Seoul Bankruptcy Court opened rehabilitation proceedings for the cinema operator on June 30 after the company sought court protection to normalize its operations and remain a going concern. A proposed merger between Megabox and Lotte Cinema was also halted after the memorandum of understanding between their parent companies expired on June 30. The government, meanwhile, is spending public money to lure audiences back. Lotte Cinema World Tower's SUPER PLEX in Jamsil — the chain's flagship large-format auditorium, once Guinness-certified as the world's biggest cinema screen, with bean-bag and sofa-bed seating up front for full recline. Courtesy of Lotte Cinema A supplementary budget approved in April allocated 27.1 billion won for 4.5 million cinema discount vouchers worth 6,000 won each. After the first round, about 2.05 million vouchers were distributed in a second round beginning July 8 through CGV, Lotte Cinema, Megabox and CineQ. The Culture Ministry made the seasonal strategy unusually explicit. The title of its July 6 announcement promoting the second round asked: “How about the cinema as your summer vacation destination?” That makes this summer’s box-office rebound impossible to pin on one factor. Record heat has made air-conditioned indoor entertainment more attractive. Blockbusters have supplied the films people want to see. Government vouchers have made tickets cheaper. What the heat has done most clearly is give cinema operators a fresh way to sell the one thing Netflix, Disney+ and other streaming platforms cannot provide: the room itself. Whether book clubs, overnight screenings, recliners and premium auditoriums can materially change the economics of moviegoing — or merely deliver extra traffic during an extraordinary summer — remains uncertain. For Kim, however, the calculation is simpler. “No matter how far streaming comes,” she said, “it can never recreate the memory of eating popcorn in a theater, or that smell of butter the moment you walk in.”