A period drama about a 15th-century deposed boy king has become one of the biggest Korean box office stories in years. Distributor Showbox announced that “The Man Who Lives with the King” crossed 14 million admissions on the morning of March 20, just 45 days after its February 4 release, vaulting the film into fifth place on Korea’s all-time box office chart, ahead of “Ode to My Father” and behind only “Roaring Currents,” “Extreme Job,” and “Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds.”
The film dramatizes the story of Danjong, Joseon’s boy king, who was deposed by his own uncle and exiled to Cheongnyeongpo, a small riverside outpost in what is now Yeongwol County, Gangwon Province. There he crosses paths with Eom Heung-do, the village headman who volunteers to look after him. Yoo Hae-jin plays Eom, with Park Ji-hoon as the young exiled king, alongside a cast that includes Yoo Ji-tae, Jeon Mi-do, Lee Jun-hyeok, and Ahn Jae-hong. The film is directed by Jang Hang-jun, better known to Korean audiences for his frequent variety show appearances than for his filmmaking, a fact that made the scale of this hit all the more notable within the industry.
The film’s trajectory has been unusually steady rather than explosive. It passed 13 million admissions on March 15, becoming the top-grossing Korean film of the 2020s decade at that point, and reached 14 million just five days later, with same-day advance ticket sales still running around 162,000 as of that morning, a sign that momentum had far from faded. Industry watchers at the time noted that a run at 15 million admissions was not out of the question given the pace.
The film’s success places it among a small circle of Korean releases to ever cross the 10-million mark, a threshold widely treated as a mark of blockbuster status domestically. It is the 25th Korean film to do so, and only the fourth sageuk, or historical costume drama, to reach that milestone, joining a genre that has historically had a harder time crossing into true mass-audience territory compared to contemporary dramas or action films.
Source: Son Jung-bin, Newsis, March 20, 2026.
