While the impeachment bill against President Yoon Seok-yeol was passed on the 14th, 11 days after the December 3 martial law, the documentary film ‘First Lady’, which deals with various suspicions and controversies surrounding President Yoon‘s wife, Kim Kun-hee, is showing unusual signs of box office success.

‘First Lady’ focuses on the suspicions that the first lady, not the president, is privatizing power, and deals with a wide range of issues, including Kim Kun-hee’s falsification of academic and career records, thesis plagiarism, suspicions of Deutsche Motors stock price manipulation, and allegations of her involvement with a shaman. It also included interviews with Pastor Choi Jae-young, who is known to have given Mrs. Kim a luxury bag; Seoul Voice reporter Lee Myeong-su, who spoke on the phone with Mrs. Kim Kun-hee for over 7 hours during the presidential election; and Chairman Jeong Dae-taek, who has been in a lawsuit with the Kim Kun-hee family for over 10 years.

According to the integrated computer network for movie tickets of the Korean Film Council on the 15th, ‘First Lady’, which was released on the 12th, has attracted a cumulative audience of 26,005 as of the 14th, the third day of screening. Considering that it is an independent documentary released in a small number of theaters, this is a very meaningful number, and it is showing a similar box office speed to the documentary ‘National Foundation War’ about President Syngman Rhee, which succeeded in attracting 1.17 million viewers by gathering conservative forces in theaters early this year and becoming a ‘surprise box office hit’.
In particular, on the 14th when the impeachment motion against President Yoon was passed, it drew attention by recording a seat sales rate of over 37% with only 0.8% of the total seats in theaters. It also demonstrated its strength by coming in 8th in the overall box office dominated by big commercial films.

The public interest in the film is also revealed in the number of trailer views. The main trailer video, which was uploaded to the YouTube channel ‘Korea Film’ on the 6th, surpassed 870,000 views in just ten days since its release. In particular, the previously unreleased video released separately by ‘Voice of Seoul’, which has continuously reported on the suspicions surrounding Mrs. Kim and participated in the production of this film, surpassed 1.51 million views in just three days after its release. The video shows Mrs. Kim reading a male reporter‘s palm and saying things like, “Why do you like women so much?”

Kim Hoon-tae, the CEO of Today Pictures, the production company of ‘First Lady’, said, “When we are indifferent, monsters that thrive on power are born and threaten our peaceful lives,” and added, “I hope that the politically indifferent, the moderates, and young people in their 20s and 30s will watch this film without prejudice.”



Reporter Seungmi Lee smlee@donga.com