General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure (해적 Part Ⅱ: 도깨비 깃발)

The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure (해적: 도깨비 깃발) is a 2022 South Korean period adventure film directed by Kim Jeong-hoon, in which pirates and bandits sail in search of royal treasure that vanished from the late Goryeo court.¹^•² It opened in South Korea on January 26, 2022, ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, and was released for streaming on Netflix on March 2, 2022.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Korean title / release	해적: 도깨비 깃발; January 26, 2022, 125 minutes, rated 12 and over³
Genre	Adventure, action, comedy¹
Director and distributor	Kim Jeong-hoon; Lotte Entertainment³
Main cast	Kang Ha-neul, Han Hyo-joo, Lee Kwang-soo, Kwon Sang-woo, Chae Soo-bin, Sehun (EXO), Kim Sung-oh, Park Ji-hwan⁵
Box office	About 1,336,756 admissions and 12.5 billion won in gross; first Korean release of 2022 to pass 1 million admissions³^•⁶
Holiday performance	First place over the Lunar New Year holiday with about 387,000 admissions from January 31 to February 2, 2022⁷
Streaming	Netflix from March 2, 2022⁴

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The story follows two rival crews forced onto one ship. Moochi (Kang Ha-neul) is the leader of a band of righteous bandits who calls himself the finest swordsman of Goryeo, and Hae-rang (Han Hyo-joo) commands a pirate ship that rules the sea. Their groups clash constantly on land and at sea until, while sweeping Japanese pirate ships, they learn that royal treasure lost without a trace from the late Goryeo court lies hidden somewhere, and they set out on a dangerous hunt for the largest haul of their lives. They are not alone: the treacherous Bu Heung-su (Kwon Sang-woo) also enters the fray, willing to use any means to take the treasure.³^•²

The supporting ensemble fills out the crew. Lee Kwang-soo plays Mak-i, an aspiring pirate king; Chae Soo-bin plays Hae-geum, a born swindler; Sehun of EXO plays Han-gung, an archer who never misses; Kim Sung-oh plays Kang-seop, Moochi's right-hand man; and Park Ji-hwan plays A-gwi, the pirate crew's brawler.⁵ For Kwon Sang-woo the role was his first period drama, and for Sehun it was his first film appearance.⁸

Production and release

The film was produced by ANEW and Oscar10studio, written by Cheon Seong-il, and produced by Song Yong-woon.⁴ Principal photography began with a crank-in in July, and shooting was disrupted in November when a member of the special-effects staff tested positive for COVID-19.⁹ Lotte Entertainment scheduled the release for the Lunar New Year holiday season, positioning it as a large-scale Korean entertainment film for the holiday audience.⁵

The film leans on large-scale visual effects. Its imaginary visuals, including pillars of fire, an island struck by lightning at sea, and a giant tsunami, were built through computer graphics work requiring large volumes of data, scenes the production described as rarely seen in Korean film to that point.⁸ The film was shown in premium formats including IMAX and 4DX.¹⁰

Box office

The film won the Lunar New Year holiday box office race among Korean films. According to the Korean Film Council's integrated ticketing network, it drew about 387,000 admissions over the three holiday days of January 31 to February 2, 2022, holding first place ahead of Kingmaker, and about 650,000 admissions over five days.⁷ It became the first film released in 2022 to pass 1 million admissions in Korea.⁶

Its final total was about 1.34 million admissions and 12.5 billion won in gross receipts.³ Industry estimates placed its break-even point at about 4.5 million admissions, so the theatrical run fell far short of recovering its production cost, and commentary at mid-year noted hopes that video-on-demand and secondary markets would offset the loss.⁶ The film also ranked first among the most-pirated Korean films in the first quarter of 2022, with 54 infringing items tracked by the copyright protection monitoring program.¹¹

Relation to the 2014 film

Although it carries The Pirates title, the film is effectively a standalone work. The 2014 predecessor The Pirates: Bandits Going Out to Sea drew more than 8 million admissions, and the new film was ambitiously produced to continue that success, but reviewers widely noted that the lead actors were all replaced and the story does not continue, making it a separate film in practice.⁶^•¹² Critics observed that apart from pirates appearing as protagonists, it shares little with the earlier film, which had centered on a royal seal swallowed by a whale, while the sequel centers on hidden Goryeo royal treasure.¹³

Reception

Critical response was mixed. On Rotten Tomatoes the film held an 80% Tomatometer from five critics and a 69% audience score.⁴ Korean reviews praised the spectacle, the expanded sea and land battles, and Han Hyo-joo's action performance, while finding the story scattered and predictable; aggregated Korean scores sat in the mid range, with Naver user ratings of 6.1 out of 10.¹⁴^•³ After its Netflix release the film reached 77th place among the platform's most-viewed titles in the period surveyed, alongside Netflix's own 2022 Korean original films.¹⁵

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026