‘Secretly Greatly’ is off to a good start

A movie starring Kim Su-hyun, star of MBC drama “The Moon That Embraces the Sun” last year, has taken a promising first step.

“Secretly Greatly” attracted about 500,000 moviegoers on the day of its release Wednesday, setting a new record for Korean movies. The previous record holder was “The Theives,” which sold roughly 430,000 tickets on its first day last year.

“Secretly Greatly” is expected to continue its good run, as distributor Showbox said yesterday that it attracted more than one million fans within two days since the release. The time taken for the movie to have one million fans was shorter than for “Transformer: Dark of the Moon.” The 2011 movie took three days to sell one million tickets at local theaters. The third Transformer series also set a record for attracting the most fans on the day of release among imported films.

“It looks like people went to the theater a lot prior to the holiday and students who are done with their school tests have also started heading to the theater,” an official at Showbox told Ilgan Sports, an affiliate of the Korea JoongAng Daily. June 6 is Memorial Day in Korea, which is a national holiday. “The popularity of stars like Kim Su-hyun have also given the film a boost.”

In the movie, Kim plays a North Korean agent who infiltrates the South.

By Lee Sun-min