It was neck-and-neck last weekend between the action film DRAGONBALL EVOLUTION and the South Korean melodrama A SAD STORY THAN SADNESS (Seulpeum-boda Deo Seulpeun Iyagi), but in the end, SADNESS won out. Just barely, with 256,649 admissions versus 252,625.

Revenues were a little wider apart, thanks to DRAGONBALL appealing to the kiddies. SADNESS made 1.74 billion won ($1.23 million) over the weekend, and a total of 2.1 billion won ($1.48 million) since Thursday evening. DRAGONBALL made 1.60 billion won ($1.13 million) and 1.76 billion won ($1.24 million) total.

Coming in third was everybody’s favorite cow, OLD PARTNER (Wonang Sori). It made another 1.03 billion won to bring its two-month total to 17.52 billion won ($12.34 million).

WATCHMEN dropped all the way to fifth, earning just 921.9 million won to bring its total box office to 3.64 billion won ($2.56 million).

The only other Korean film in the top 10 last weekend was THE SCAM (Jakjeon), which landed in eighth. It has now made 9.63 billion won ($6.78 million).

Six of the top 10 films last weekend were new releases. Korean films have accounted for 46.8 percent of the box office so far in 2009.

(Courtesy of KOBIS and the Korean Film Council. Figures represent 98% of the nationwide box office).