The woman who single-handedly turned Korea into a global film and TV powerhouse

polygon.com:

Employing a mix of research, deep reporting, and over 100 full-color data visualizations, Walt Hickey’s new book You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything explores how movies, TV, and pop culture affect… well, everything, from what we watch to what we buy to how we live. The following is excerpted from the book, which is available now.

Japan and Britain largely invented the contemporary playbook for investment in soft power through cultural exports, finding ways to cement their cultural wants and desires through those exports. Korea followed, and with considerable success.

South Korea has used soft cultural power deftly for years. When South Korean or American films or television shows made their way into North Korea, they were potent motivators for those who found their stories and the degree of affluence and lifestyle so appealing, it inspired them to escape the country.

After the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung loosened the bans on cultural imports from Japan. Later, in 1999, the government allocated $148 million to cultural production after the passage of a law to fund 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. An heir of the founder of Samsung, Lee has been the longtime patron and champion of Korean film and culture locally and abroad.

CJ, the vehicle that Lee steered to the top of the heap of culture, is an embodiment of Korean industrialization and globalization. CJ Group started out as a sugar- and flour-milling company. Later it moved into food and beverage production, and