The animated film based on the popular Japanese character Chiikawa is drawing unusual attention in South Korea. "Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of Mermaid Island" has drawn a cumulative 1.828 million viewers and topped the weekend box office for a second straight week, according to data from the Korean Film Council's box office tracking system on the 19th. "Chiikawa" is a shortened form of a Japanese phrase meaning "something small and cute." In Korea, the film is better known by a Korean acronym drawn from the first syllables of the same phrase. The movie is based on a cartoon that Japanese illustrator Nagano has serialized on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, since 2020, drawing explosive popularity.
The characters in the series look endlessly cute, but the world they live in is harsher than the word cruel can capture. To make a living, they pull weeds and stick labels on products, and when they set out to hunt monsters for bigger money, they sometimes end up being eaten instead. The main character, Chiikawa, wins an apartment subscription lottery and lives in a decent home, while a friend without money gets by in a run-down cave dwelling. Those contrasting circumstances call to mind economic inequality. A cross-section of our times is embedded in the story as it is.
Young adults are the driving force behind the film's box office success. In one scene, the main character takes a weed-cutting certification test to earn more money, fails alone and sheds tears — a moment that captures the hardships of Koreans in their 20s and 30s living with job insecurity and fierce competition. Yet the series does not depict only weary lives. Amid difficult daily routines, the characters share food with friends, sing together and comfort one another, finding small moments of happiness.
Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun recently pointed to one reason for Chiikawa's popularity in Korea: young audiences in a highly competitive society identify with the film's content and worldview. The social issues surrounding people in their 20s and 30s must not be dismissed as personal problems or ignored. Easing difficulties in finding jobs and housing affects not only the future of young people but also the country's growth potential. Social effort and attention to ease the pain of the younger generation are urgently needed.