Chuseok is the holiday Korean distributors plan their year around, and this autumn it went to the least comfortable film in the race. The Assassin(s), director Hur Jin-ho’s historical thriller about the shooting that killed South Korea’s First Lady during an attempt on President Park Chung-hee’s life, finished ahead of a long-awaited gambling-franchise sequel and of Christopher Nolan‘s The Odyssey, the biggest Hollywood import of the Korean year.

As Deadline first reported, citing Korean Film Council (KOFIC) data, the film crossed one and a half million admissions in its opening five days, arriving in Korean cinemas fresh from its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The cast is built on three familiar faces: Yoo Hai-jin (A Taxi Driver) plays a senior police inspector, Park Hae-il (Decision to Leave) a veteran newspaper journalist and Lee Min-ho a rookie reporter, all three trying to establish who was really responsible despite threats to their careers and their lives.

The exact tally is 1,546,614 admissions and $11.3 million (KRW 15.3 billion) since the film opened on September 23. The Chuseok holiday itself officially ran for three days, from September 24 to 27, and The Assassin(s) revisits the events of 1974 in which the gunfire aimed at Park killed his wife, Yuk Young-soo.

Second place over the holiday week went to Tazza: The Song of Beelzebub, the new chapter of the popular gambling franchise, which opened the same day and took just over $6 million from 813,842 admissions. The Odyssey came third, adding $5 million to a record-breaking Korean run of just over $98 million from 11.7 million admissions since its August 5 release. Warner Bros Korea’s The Intern, a local remake of the 2015 Hollywood comedy with Choi Min-sik and Han So-hee in the roles played by Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway, placed fourth with $2.6 million, for $5.5 million in total.

Hur built his name on quiet melodramas such as Christmas in August and One Fine Spring Day before turning to twentieth-century history with The Last Princess. The Assassin(s) moves him into political-conspiracy territory, and it comes from Hive Media Corp, the production company behind 12.12: The Day and Harbin. For the year to date, the historical drama The King’s Warden still leads the Korean market with $120 million from 16.9 million admissions.

Opening the same day, Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love, the Netflix-backed Venice winner chosen as Korea’s official submission for Best International Feature at the Oscars, debuted fifth on the weekend chart with around $1 million in five days. In the week Korean cinema cares about most, a Toronto premiere turned into a million and a half tickets, while a Venice laureate and Oscar hopeful settled for fifth place.