"The Host" opened in Japan, and "Sinking of Japan" opened in Korea, both last weekend. And the winner of the weekend box battle was "Sinking" in both locations.
In Japan, "The Host" was ranked No. 7, one notch lower than "Sinking" at its 8th week of showing and is considered a bit disappointing result. In Korea, "Sinking" got 470,000 attendance through Thur-Sun, and won the top position, ousting "The Host" after 5 weeks at #1. It is reported to be the first time for a Japanese live action movie to open at the top of box office ranking. The studio Toho is expecting that it will be the biggest ever live action hoga record in Korea. (9/7 addition: Kaiju Shakedown reports the result is second to "Howl's Moving Castle", so I suppose the original article meant "the biggest live-acition Japanese film. I corrected this discription accordingly.)
As I reported earlier, "Sinking" star Tsuyoshi Kusanagi is famous for his strong ties with Korea, and I suppose that certainly helped. As for "The Host" in Japan, it looks like the Net rumor about its star monster was not enough to draw attention of the mass audience.
Ryuganji has the link to Variety article about "Sinking" in Korea.
As an additional info, youth film staged in the high-tech town "Akihabara at DEEP" did not make it to the top 10.
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