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Investigation
Korean
telenovelas and films amaze
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By Sanneth
Arlou in Korea and Marcela Herrán
in Miami
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 he
powerful Korean film industry arises some serious
questions due to its amazing characteristics:
the syner-gies between an industrial sector
sustained by comedies and action and suspense
stories carried out with impor-tant budgets
and popular stars assure ma-ssive audiences.
In this country, with a population of almost
50 million people, 78 lo- callyproduced films
were released in 2002, keeping 47% of the total
ticketoffice and ex- ceeding, something never
seen in the world, the market share got by all
American films
Investments
in communication in Spanish language
TVMAS had
access to key information: The Korean are preparing
their screen to make these products successful
and invest in communication to spread and get
these products closer to international markets.
Another important data is the export capacity.
The Korean sold the rights of 121 films in 2002
and 30 short films to 32 countries for more than
15 million dollars. One of the surprising stories
“Amigo”, a group of classmates
who take different roads in life, had more than
8 million spectators and it just collected 44
million dollars in its country. These are figures
related to film industry but soon we will see
similar hits in telenovelas.
Big
projects, big challenges
Although Cinema Service and CJ Entertainment,
the two biggest studios, announced the reduction
of projects and possible merges, the rumors
connected to television are a red signal. The
big American economic groups have already attacked
these Korean industries profiting from the financing
crisis the country is going through. Hollywood,
as the saver of these fragilities, is keeping
a wide share of the market. Moreover, Walt
Disney International Group is buying not
just films at very good price but the rights
of the remakes after the success they had in
their first Korean production, The Phone,
with a cost of 2.5 million dollars and a recovery
of up to 11 million until last summer. Meanwhile,
Sony group, (ex Columbia Tri-Star) bets
in financing the total 10 million superproduction
Silmi Island. Even though these two giants
are after Korean industries, we know that they
will bet in telenovelas, a genre that both Hollywood
enterprises entered: Disney, more than
three years ago and Sony, last year when
it acquired the Chilean telenovela, Machos
rights at the First World Telenovela Industry
Summit held in Miami to distribute it all over
the world.
What perspectives are there? Many questions and
doubts will be clear and many projects presented
at the Second World Summit in Barcelona this year.
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The
design of these brochure caused
a big impact in some buyers and
sellers advertistment of offer
of telenovelas of KBS Media from
Korea. |
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With
this background, Korean producing companies
have focused on telenovelas and they have already
entered international markets to sell their
productions through campaigns in Cervantes’
language that read “Vendemos Telenovelas”
(We sell telenovelas).
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