What CJ turns over in food is around two hundred times what Austria spends on film in total. That is one half of the finding. The other is less comfortable: both systems measure success — just not the same one.
The first part covered how Korea built its film industry: a sugar refinery, an investment in Hollywood, a state that runs cultural export as economic policy. This part is the comparison — and it begins with a figure that is hard to believe in Vienna.
This is where it becomes uncomfortable, and where the point lies that is hard to believe in Vienna. CJ is not a film company. Film is one leg of five. The original business still carries the revenue:
| CJ CheilJedang, revenue 2025 | 27,340 billion won |
|---|---|
| ≈ 17–19 billion euros | |
| Austrian film funding, federal level 2026 (ÖFI Classic, ÖFI+, FISAplus) | around 91 million euros |
| Ratio | roughly 200 : 1 |
That is the comparison: what CJ turns over in food is around two hundred times what Austria spends on film in total. Not CJ's film business — the food. The film business is the smaller part.
And on the scale of things:
| Amount | |
|---|---|
| Production of "Parasite" | ≈ 11 million $ |
| Its Oscar campaign (estimate) | 4–5 million $ |
| Netflix, 2020 campaigns, eight films | 70–100 million $ |
| Netflix for "Roma", the year before | ≈ 30 million $ |
| Usual war chest, serious contender | ≈ 15 million $ |
| FISAplus 2026, after cuts | 54.9 million € |
| ÖFI+ 2026, budget estimate | 15.5 million € |
| Vienna Film Fund, annually | ≈ 11 million € |
The Oscar campaign for a single film cost roughly what the Vienna Film Fund spends in half a year on everything shot in the city. Netflix spent more on promotion that year than Austria spends on films in a decade.
And the Austrian figure is a snapshot on the way down. FISAplus held eighty million in autumn 2025 and was cut to just under fifty-five for 2026. The location incentive ÖFI+ no longer accepts regular applications owing to the budget situation — only projects with an existing commitment qualify. Anyone writing about Austrian film funding must state the year, because the amounts are changing annually at present.
Before this turns into complaint: the amounts are not arbitrary, they follow market size.
| Korea | Austria | |
|---|---|---|
| Population | ≈ 51.7 million | ≈ 9.2 million |
| Cinema admissions 2024 | 123 million | ≈ 10 million |
| Admissions per inhabitant | ≈ 2.4 | ≈ 1.1 |
| Domestic market share 2024 | 58 % | single digit |
| Box office 2024 | ≈ 812 million $ | under 100 million € |
How the amounts play out day to day is a question of distribution: there are more applications than funds for the number of projects developed in Austria. Producers here therefore work on several projects at once and expect only some to come together. This is not a reproach to the funding bodies — they distribute what the federal budget allocates to them, on transparent criteria. It describes the scale on which work happens here.
A Korean film can make money at home. An Austrian film structurally cannot — not for lack of quality, but because nine million people, each going to the cinema about once a year, do not constitute a market in which a feature refinances itself.
Here a thesis often read about Korea needs withdrawing: that directors are built there over the long term and not here. That is not accurate. Austrian filmmakers are also accompanied across years — by the same funding bodies, the same production companies, often across an entire body of work.
The difference is not duration. It is the yardstick by which success is measured.
In Korea it is the market. In 2024 eleven Korean films broke even, up from six the year before. That is the figure discussed there, and it decides the next investment.
In Austria it is the festival. An invitation to Cannes, Berlin or Venice, an Austrian Film Award, an Oscar submission — these are the proofs by which public money is justified. That is not a quirk but the only possible consequence of the table above: where the market cannot register success, another measure is needed.
Korea counts admissions. We count invitations. Both measure success — but not the same one.
What follows is uncomfortable. A system measured by festivals produces films built for festivals. A system measured by admissions produces sequels — visible in Korea too: 2025 was the first year outside the pandemic since 2012 in which no Korean film reached ten million admissions, and the most successful titles of the preceding years were fourth instalments.
Neither system is the better one. They have different diseases.
The yardstick is one half. The other is the question of whose money it is and what it wants back.
In Korea, film financing is capital investment. CJ, but also investment funds, banks and streaming services put money into a film and expect it back, with a share of the result, of foreign rights, of the exploitation chain. A director with a name is not an applicant in this system but an asset. Bong Joon-ho brings capital to a project because his name changes the risk assessment. Park Chan-wook likewise. The name lowers the cost of capital.
Here, film financing is predominantly subsidy. The money is public, it does not flow back, and it is not awarded on expected return but on eligibility. A director with a name is valuable here too — differently: his name persuades a selection committee. He is a reference, not an asset.
A name brings investors in Seoul. In Vienna it brings a favourable decision.
Both work. But they produce two different professions. Seeking investors means selling a business: audience, comparable films, expected takings, exploitation stages, who recovers what and when. Applying for subsidy means justifying an undertaking: cultural relevance, authorial signature, the necessity of this particular film.
This is where co-productions between the two worlds regularly talk past each other. The Korean partner asks about the recoupment waterfall and receives a financing plan. The Austrian partner explains cultural significance and is asked when it will pay off. Both are right — they are answering different questions.
Anyone setting up such a co-production must build in that translation step from the start: what in the European share is recoupable, what is not, and how non-recoupable subsidy relates to the investor's calculation. Clarified only at the end, it is too late.
A comparison of size easily turns into lament. That would be wrong and useless. An Austrian partner in a co-production brings things that cannot be bought in Seoul.
An incentive scheme with clear rates. The location incentive refunds a share of costs incurred in Austria, with an additional bonus for productions working to green filming criteria. For a foreign partner that is not supplication but a calculable figure in the financing plan.
Access to the European area. Under the European Convention on Cinematographic Co-production, a recognised co-production is treated as a national film in every contracting state. A purely Korean project has no such access — and that is the real value of a European partner.
Craft and infrastructure. Camera, design, post-production, music. Vienna has a density of film craft and music production unusual for a city of its size — and for Korean material set in Europe, those are precisely the departments that matter.
And continuity. A funding landscape that does not decide by quarters allows one to stay with a subject for years. That is the advantage of a system not measured by the market: it keeps projects alive that do not pay off immediately. In a co-production with a country where every project is a capital investment, that is not a drawback but the contribution the other side cannot make.
RitzlFilm has been working on Austrian-Korean projects since 2019. Not because Korean content happens to be in demand, but because we hold two stories that would not exist without both countries: Franziska Donner, the Viennese woman who became First Lady of Korea. And Korean music students in Vienna — a subject that begins with us.
Anyone working with Korean partners notices quickly that the size of the subsidy is not the first question asked. What is asked is who will still be there in five years.
And since the question arises as soon as one talks to Korean partners: there is no film co-production treaty between Austria and Korea. What the Film Funding Act provides instead is the subject of a separate piece.