In its third week at the top of South Korea’s box office charts, local political drama The Attorney is set to go past 8 million admissions tomorrow (Jan 7).

Starring Song Kang-ho, the film took 1.23 million admissions and $8.74m over the weekend to get a total $53.6m since its release.

Written and directed by debuting filmmaker Yang Woo-suk, The Attorney has been racking up admissions at a rate faster than last year’s top hit Miracle In Cell No. 7, which finished with a total of 12.81 million admissions.

Based on the country’s late ex-president Roh Moo-hyun’s early days as a lawyer in 1980s Busan, the film shows how he went from high school graduate construction worker to become a top tax attorney to the pivotal incident where the military dictatorship framed, tortured and prosecuted a group of innocent young men of being Communists, and how the attorney takes up their defense in the courtroom.

Released by N.E.W., the film was on 925 screens over the weekend.

In second place, Showbox’s local action thriller The Suspect took 542,736 admissions and $3.83m for a total of $21.1m. Directed by Won Shin-yun (7 days) and starring Gong Yoo (Silenced) as a hunted North Korean spy, the film was released Dec 24.

It’s followed by The Secret Life of Walter Mitty with 236,408 admissions and $1.66m. Released by 20th Century Fox Korea on Dec 31, Mitty has so far taken $3.5m in total.