The woman who single-handedly made Korea a global movie powerhouse

Employing a mix of research, deep reporting, and over 100 full-color data visualizations, Walt Hickey’s new book The Movies You Watch Can Change Your LifeExplores how pop culture, movies and TV affect everything from what we see to what you buy to the way we live. Here are some excerpts from the book. It is now available.

Japan and Britain are largely responsible for the development of the current playbook on soft power investment through cultural trade, and how to cement cultural needs and desires via cultural exports. Korea then followed suit, and achieved great success.

South Korea’s soft power has been used deftly by the country for many years. South Korean films and television programs that reached North Korea had a powerful effect on those who were inspired by the stories they told and their lifestyle.

Kim Dae Jung, South Korean president in late 1990s after the Asian Financial Crisis, loosened import bans for Japanese cultural products. In 1999, after the passing of the law for funding cultural production, the South Korean government allotted $148 million towards it.

As an industry, Korea’s pop culture business is dominated by one company, CJ Group, operated by founder and de facto queen of all Korean cultural production, Miky Lee, who basically built the film industry in Korea. Lee, an heir to the founder of Samsung and a long-time champion and patron of Korean culture and film locally and internationally, is the scion of this company.

CJ is the embodiment of Korean globalization and industrialization. CJ Group was originally a milling firm for sugar and flour. The company then expanded into the food and beverages industry, and Lee Byung Chul founded Samsung. Samsung is now a significant part of South Korea’s economy.

Lee Byungchul’s granddaughter grew watching American films. When she received her inheritance, Lee decided to put a small amount of money into a movie company. Around the same time, other Asian companies were already getting their feet wet in Hollywood: Japan’s Sony bought Columbia Pictures, and for a while Matsushita owned Universal, though they eventually sold it to Seagram.

Lee was intrigued by the potential of a company that was being formed by a number of experienced producers attempting something that hadn’t been accomplished since the founding era of film—making a movie studio from scratch. Although the founders were talented and skilled, they needed money. Miky Lee, David Geffen and Steven Spielberg along with Jeffrey Katzenberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg put up $300,000,000 in exchange of 10.8% of DreamWorks in Asia and the distribution rights to DreamWorks’ films outside Japan.

Photo: Tartan Films/Everett Collection

Lee’s resources and access to distribution, importation, and film production allowed her to expand the Korean film market. CJ GCV owns 50% of the Korean movie theater market. The reason they are so popular is partly that people were there when they built them: in 1998, an average Korean would watch 0.8 movies a year at the cinema. Today, this figure has risen to 4, which is among the world’s highest.

Although she began as an importer of DreamWorks films into Korea, her company is now a major producer, producing both local blockbusters and Korean stars like Bong Joon-Ho and Park Chanwook. Now, Korean films account for half the domestic market. As Korea’s only studio with foreign distribution, CJ is now trying to make two to three English-language films a year.

Lee’s accomplishments are inspirational, taking a company from a flour miller to food distributor to film importer to film producer to film exporter, all over the course of mere decades. CJ owns 16 television stations, as well as 940 albums and 4,187 screens spread across 189 different countries.

And it’s not just CJ: The South Korean national policy of translating and exporting entertainment was logging some bona-fide hits. Korea achieved its first major international success in 2002 with the domestically successful soap operas “The King of Comedy” and “Kingdom Come.” Winter SonataThe translations and exports of the book were a smash hit in Iraq and Egypt.

Korean music was some of the first Korean culture to penetrate internationally, both with regional rivals—EXO, a combined Chinese- Korean pop band—as well as globally, whether with Psy and “Gangnam Style” becoming a YouTube juggernaut or BTS, an unstoppable pop phenomenon. Internally, the global adoption of Korean pop culture—at first in a few other countries in their region, then in countries in the Middle East and Africa, and finally breaking into niches in the United States and other rich, developed Western countries—has been called Hallyu, or the “Korean Wave.”

This wave is now mainstream, not just a niche phenomenon. BTS became one of the best-selling acts on the planet, accounting for $4.65 billion of Korea’s GDP in 2019.

Korea also influences American culture more subtly. Daniel Dae Kim—an actor best known for roles on Lost and Hawaii Five-0—operates 3AD, a production company that repackages television concepts that were hits in Korea for export to the United States. South Korea developed and tested—and Kim subsequently imported—concepts like The Masked Singer, a competitive singing competition of disguised celebrities, and The Good Doctor, a drama about an autistic doctor.

Heather Jones (artist) and Walt Hickey

The insatiable appeal of South Korean cultural exports doesn’t stop at their northern border, though North Korean leadership tries to do just that. In January 2021, sources in South Korea reported a crackdown on people smuggling dramas and music into North Korea, with Kim Jong-un calling it a “vicious cancer” that, if left unchecked, would make the North “crumble like a damp wall.” State media regularly rails against South Korean media making its way into the country. One reason appears to be that it’s somewhat instrumental in revealing the reality of the conditions in the North compared with the relative luxury in the South.

In a 2018 study, 127 North Korean defections were interviewed. Researchers were curious about the impact of South Korean popular culture north of the DMZ after a 2011 confession by a defector that a K drama was a factor in their decision to flee.

The 127 North Korean refugees interviewed had at least seen South Korean TV and films twice. However, only 40% of these people have access to secret Internet. 72 percent said that they enjoyed South Korean films and television, while 26 percent mentioned their love of K-pop. Fifty-seven percent said the influence of South Korean media weighed “very much” in their defection, with only 12 percent saying it had no impact at all. Follow-up questions revealed why: The dramas showed a freer lifestyle, introduced fashion and hairstyles unavailable in the North, and raised expectations about what a life in South Korea was really like versus what they’d been told by the State. Others noted that South Korean woman were capable of driving; some said that power was never lost during K-dramas.

South Korean pop culture will be at the forefront of world culture in the early 2020s. The success of Squid Game Netflix made a South Korean series the top-rated thing in the entire world for multiple weeks. The sales of white Vans slip-ons, worn by characters in death matches in the first few weeks following the premiere, increased 7,800%. According to Netflix, the show added $1.9 billion to Korea’s economy.

Korean exports will surpass household appliances in 2020 and are on pace to pass computer exports which currently stand at $13.4billion. In Korea, the entertainment sector is growing at a rapid pace. The number of people employed in artistic and creative services increased 27 percent from 2009 to 2019. In 2021, BTS’s song “Dynamite” generated $1.43 billion on its own.

CJ Entertainment & Media in August 2006 said that soon, “Everyone will watch at least two to three Korean movies a year, eat Korean food one to two times per month, watch one to two Korean dramas per week, and listen to one to two Korean songs per day, that Korean culture will be a part of everyday life.”

In Korea too, this goal was considered absurd. It seems reasonable now, a decade and a quarter later. After the Best Picture and Best Director wins for Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite At the 2019 Academy Awards in Los Angeles, Korean films experienced a halo-effect. After ParasiteBong’s producing partner and himself spoke after the win, expressing their gratitude and appreciation to Korean movie fans, as well as Miky, the producer.

The Movies You Watch Can Change Your Life

Price taken from the publication.

You may have wondered why so many movies are now sequels, reboots, or even prequels. You may wonder why Leonardo DiCaprio, SpongeBob or other celebrities are featured in so many memes. What then? You Are What You Watch is the book for you.