There’s a nice little story on the Wall Street Journal‘s Korea blog about the success of a new Korean animated film, LEAFIE, A HEN INTO THE WILD. While not a blockbuster, LEAFIE has managed to pull in nearly 900,000 admissions since it was released at the end of July, which I do believe makes it the most successful Korean animated film of the modern era.

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For a bunch of reasons, Korean animation just has not done that well over the years, with a long, long list of failures over the past 20 years (I mentioned a few in this blog post a few years ago). Considering one of my first Newsweek stories was about WONDERFUL DAYS, one of the highest-profile failures in Korean animation, it is kind of cool seeing someone actually doing okay.

One note about the WSJ story, though — it apparently needs an editor, because LEAFIE has not made 2 billion won, and 2 billion won does not equal $1 million. KOBIS says that the film has made nearly 6 billion won so far, which is around $5.4 million.