Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of Mermaid Island has passed 2.5 million admissions in South Korea, entering the top 10 of the year’s overall box office rankings and extending one of the most durable theatrical runs of the autumn.
According to the Korean Film Council’s Korean Box Office Information System (KOBIS), the film drew 97,464 moviegoers on the previous day to hold first place at the Korean box office, taking its cumulative audience to 2,490,845. According to the distributor’s tally, the film had drawn a cumulative audience of 2,527,920 by midnight that day, passing the 2.5 million mark 33 days after its release on September 30. JTBC reported the milestone and the film’s entry into the year’s top 10.
The pace of the run puts Chiikawa ahead of one major Japanese animation benchmark and level with another. The film reached 2.5 million three days faster than The First Slam Dunk, which took 36 days, and at the same pace as Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc, which also took 33 days. Among Japanese animated films ever released in Korea, Chiikawa has risen to seventh place, surpassing Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train, which drew 2.21 million moviegoers in Korea.
The milestone is the latest step in a run that has repeatedly defied the usual front-loaded pattern for animated releases. The film topped the Korean box office over the October 9-11 holiday weekend, drawing about 407,800 moviegoers in three days, and had accumulated about 1,281,000 admissions by that point. In its third weekend, October 16-18, it collected about 378,474 admissions and captured 42.7 percent of the country’s total box office revenue. A week later, over October 23-25, it again finished first for the weekend, with about 320,312 admissions, taking its cumulative total past 2.24 million and heading toward the 2.5 million mark it has now passed.
The competition around the milestone underlines how unusual the hold has been. The new film Heart of the Beast, starring Brad Pitt, held second place with 68,735 moviegoers on the day Chiikawa passed 2.5 million, for a cumulative audience of 151,279. The Korean film CSAT, Secret of the Exam Questions was third with 17,053 moviegoers, bringing its cumulative total to 56,564. Hur Jin-ho’s Assassins, which had finished a close second to Chiikawa over the October 9-11 weekend, added 16,428 moviegoers to place fourth, with a cumulative audience of 3,432,778. Even after more than a month in cinemas, Chiikawa was still drawing a larger daily audience than the newest wide releases.
The film follows Chiikawa and friends as they travel to an unknown island and dig into its hidden secret, adapting the popular Siren episode serialized in 2023. In Korea the franchise goes by the nickname Munjaggui, meaning something small and cute, and has built a thick fandom. The contrast between the adorable characters and the series’ darker, more realistic worldview is widely cited as driving its box office run, and the characters’ appeal extends well beyond the screen: Chiikawa opened its first Korean store in February 2026 at Yongsan Station in Seoul.
That combination helps explain why a film built around tiny characters has held the top spot for so long in a market where new releases usually displace the previous weekend’s winner within days. Rather than opening huge and fading, Chiikawa held first place for 15 consecutive days from October 14 to 28, then regained the top spot again on October 30. Its daily totals in late October remained in five figures even as major new titles arrived, a pattern more typical of a long-running local hit than of an imported animation title. The next benchmark in sight is Toy Story 5, the top animation release of 2026 in Korea at 2.94 million admissions, a total Chiikawa is now within reach of if its hold continues.
No official statement from the distributor about the next box office target was available in the reports of the milestone. For now, the numbers themselves tell the story: a September 30 release that opened to a strong holiday weekend, survived the arrival of successive challengers, and has now joined the year’s top 10 in Korea while overtaking one of the most successful Japanese animated films ever released in the country. With the film still at number one as it passed 2.5 million, its run in Korean cinemas is not yet finished.
