The same face is appearing on morning broadcasts, weekend variety shows, and radio.
And it is all concentrated within just a few days.
This is not a coincidence, but a schedule planned by counting backward from the release date.
3-Line Summary
1. The two weeks immediately before release are a period for raising the booking rate
2. Opening-weekend results determine the number of screenings the following week
3. Anyone can view booking rates and screen counts
Counting Backward From August 12
*Okay Madam 2*, starring Uhm Jung-hwa, will be released on August 12. According to a NewsPim report, CGV Pictures is handling distribution, and the film is a sequel to the 2020 original. The first film used the confined setting of an airplane; this time, the setting moves to a cruise ship.
Ahead of the release, the cast is making the rounds simultaneously on terrestrial-network morning programs, cable variety shows, YouTube, and radio. Fan greetings are scheduled to begin in Daegu and Busan, rather than Seoul, before traveling nationwide.
That is why one person appears in so many places at once. The appearances are deliberately concentrated because scattering them would not produce anything.
Why Two Weeks?
Start with the fact that the release date is a Wednesday. Korean films are generally released on Wednesdays. This is arranged so that Thursday and Friday lead into the weekend, meaning the first weekend arrives on the fourth day after release.
What happens after that is largely determined by how many people come in those four days. That is why promotion is concentrated before release, rather than afterward. In the current theater structure, waiting for word of mouth to spread after release does not work well.
The opening of advance-ticket sales also aligns with this. Ticket sales open one to two weeks before release, and the figures accumulated from that point begin to become visible to theaters. Theaters make their judgments based on those figures.
The August Rush Is Also Calculated
The choice of an August release date follows the same logic. School breaks and vacation season overlap, so people come even on weekday afternoons, and there are audiences who enter theaters to escape the heat.
But for the same reason, all major releases cluster in this period. In August of this year alone, a new film by director Christopher Nolan opened a week earlier, on August 5. Scheduling films one week apart means standing beside the people that film has drawn to theaters without confronting it head-on.
Distribution during this period is less about choosing a good date than about finding gaps between dates already claimed by others.
Theater Schedules Are Redrawn Every Week
There is one common misunderstanding here. It is easy to think that the number of theaters showing a film is fixed in a contract before release.
That is not the case. Screening schedules are redrawn on a weekly basis. If results are good, the number of screenings increases; if they are poor, screenings are reduced to just a few per day and pushed into early and late time slots. A film usually leaves theaters not because theaters decide to “take it down,” but because its screenings keep dwindling until only times that are effectively impossible to attend remain.
That is why the opening week is not just one set of results, but the conditions for the following week. If a film fails to establish itself in its first week, the opportunity to do so itself shrinks in the second week. This is why all promotional firepower is spent before release.
The Number Called the Booking Rate
It is useful to know where the “No. 1 in booking rate” figure often seen in articles comes from.
The Korean Box Office Information System, operated by the Korean Film Council, collects ticketing information from theaters nationwide in real time. Since July 2016, every theater in the country has been connected to it. In addition to booking rates, it publicly releases daily and weekly figures for each film’s number of screens, screen share, number of screenings, and seat occupancy rate.
Anyone can view them. That also means there is no need to simply take the figures in articles at face value.
When Booking Rate and Seat Occupancy Diverge
The booking rate is the share that a film accounts for among advance tickets sold that day. But when a film has many screenings, it also has more tickets available to sell. A high booking rate may be the result of receiving many screens.
So if you look only at the booking rate, you may read the order backward. You need to look at the number of screens and seat occupancy rate together. If there are few screens but the seat occupancy rate is high, people have actually flocked to the film; if there are many screens but the seat occupancy rate is low, it has received slots but failed to fill them.
The former may see its number of screenings increase, while the latter is likely to see them decline the following week. In opening-week articles, the figures that actually matter are not the ranking, but the combination of these two.
A Sequel After Six Years
One notable point in this promotion is that fan greetings are starting in Daegu and Busan rather than Seoul. This means the pre-release weekend will be spent outside the Seoul metropolitan area, reflecting a judgment about where opening-weekend audiences will come from.
Another point is that this is a sequel. Sequels are uncommon in Korean cinema. Even when the original performs well, it takes around six years, and actor schedules, production budgets, and market conditions all change in the meantime. So the very fact that a sequel has been made is also an answer regarding the original film’s performance.
In Summary
The reason an actor appears on several programs simultaneously two weeks before release is not that the person has suddenly developed a fondness for broadcasting. There is a structure in which opening-weekend results determine the number of screenings for the following several weeks, and that structure pushes promotional schedules ahead of release. The next time you see an article saying “No. 1 in booking rate,” look up the number of screens and seat occupancy rate as well. The same figures will read differently.
Sources
- NewsPim, 「“Action and Laughter Both Upgraded”…Uhm Jung-hwa Talks About ‘Okay Madam 2’」 (2026-08-04) — https://www.newspim.com/news/view/20260804000832
- Kukmin Ilbo, 「Uhm Jung-hwa Returns With ‘Okay Madam 2’」 (2026-08-04) — https://www.kmib.co.kr/article/view.asp?arcid=0030205815
- Korean Film Council Korean Box Office Information System — https://www.kobis.or.kr