foreign thank you so much Imran for that kind introduction it is wonderful to be here in the room with so much energy and the last time as Imran said I felt that incredible energy of Holly UK wave it was in September it was at the inaugural freeze art fair in the Korean capital which convened nearly a hundred thousand art World lovers from around the world and had everybody championing this idea that Korea was in fact the Asian epicenter of global Contemporary Art right now that night I had the great pleasure of catching a BTS concert
hosted by our friend Mickey Lee who has been the Godmother of K culture abroad and at the dinner that followed I looked to my left and there was the director of squid games on his way to LA to get his Emmy across from me was the incredible K-pop Idol G-Dragon who is the star of our latest Chanel connects podcast series and on my right was none other than Psy of Gangnam Style so yes I did get the selfie I couldn't resist what I realized at that moment was really that Korea was not just the most
extraordinary host but also this incredible cultural producer and as Imran said it is really one of the most dynamic explorers of cultural content from K-pop to K music to K drama to the food and the fashion and the skin care which one of our guests today is particularly excited about now while seemingly an overnight phenomenon much of this as we'll be hearing from another of our guests actually goes back all the way to the 1970s and it was a moment where post-war Korea was grappling with the conflict with Japan and also realizing that it would
be facing a future with the division between North and South now back then incredible artists like liufan started the dansei movement and they were thinking about how to establish a local narrative that also really resonated abroad fast forward 50 years and here we are riding the incredible K-Wave and I think it's really extraordinary that Imran has so thoughtfully identified it that there is this Universal energy coming out of Korea which is defined by its music with BTS and blackpink I know Jenny Kim wished she had been here but she's on a sold out tour right
now Imran mentioned the K drama I'm sure many of you are watching Pachinko are watching parasite Kim's Convenience if you're Canadian and we're really seeing this incredible celebrity of directors like bunjong ho Park Chong woo and of course the books that are being read Around the World in many many languages so this is not by accident as we're going to hear today from two incredible soft Power Players an incredible ambassadors of Korean culture abroad with us to ride the K-Wave we have Rosalie Kim who has spent over a decade as the curator of Korean art
at the Victorian Albert Museum she is a celebrated writer thinker architect and Scholar and we have with us my new old friend Irene Kim who's been named by Time Magazine as one of the top 10 Next Generation leaders changing the world Irene was praised by Forbes as one of the top 30 CEOs under 30 as a global social media star championing Korean influence abroad with her label Irene is good and she also has some amazing insights on football which we'll share with you as a very prominent athletic star on the ground so let's start with
Rosalie let's start with what is how you how did we get here and what is defining this particular moment in K culture right now well that's a really big question and I suppose earlier is actually a term composed of two word hand meaning Korean and do you meaning wave and the Korean wave is actually referring to the meteoric rise of Pop Culture from South Korea that took the World by storm in the past few years but in fact um Hailey's first we really rippled across Asia in the late 1990s led by k-drama and Cinema before
it exploded around the world from the mid-2000s onwards sphere had it this time by Kpop music and void by Young tech savvy Generations making use of the emerging smartphone Technologies and social media networks such as Facebook Twitter and YouTube that were coming at the time around the mid-2000s and today Halu is challenging the global currents of pop culture around the world and at the same time it's strengthening the South Korea self-power but this is really not a um an overnight sensation and um you have to bear in mind that actually Korea went through a succession
of traumatic event in the 20th century starting from the 1905 with the Japanese protectorate that really led to the Colonial period until 1945 and when The Liberation came actually it fell under as a victim under the sort of polar opposite power at play during the Cold War that was happening in the west and so that the territory has been divided into two with the northern part being under the trusteeship of the Soviet Union in the south of the Americans after that five years later North Korea is invading South Korea in the hope to reunify the
country under the Communist Banner but this obviously as we all know um has no real outcome because there was no Armistice and the two countries are still technically at War and at the end of the 1950s early 1960s South Korea was really considered as a third world country that was completely flattened carpet bombed during the Korean War and with a GDP that was 40 lower than that of India and it was really a moment where this very predictive like very very weak social political and economic situation created this fertile run for a military regime to
set in place and so we had a dictatorship for the next 30 Years which means that South Korea really started to become a full democracy only in the late 1980s early 1990s which means that it's only then that they started to access creative license artistic freedom and this started coming to an abrupt end in the 19 in the late 90s in 97 with the Asian financial crisis and interestingly this is the moment that Korea started to very much invest into I.T Technologies high-speed internet but curiously as well into the cultural Industries when they realize for
example that the sale of the tickets from the movie Jurassic Park by Steven Spielberg in 1993 outperformed the sale of 1.5 million Hyundai cars and so the math was really quickly done and once you know this this was this correlation between the states as well as the private investors and the formidable group of creatives that came together to create this highly as we know it today and bring it to what it is today it's so fascinating also because when you're in the Arts and you look at some of the recent Cuts here in our own
Arts Council of funding and the realization that just this year 3.7 billion dollars were invested by the government and Korean Arts it's a really interesting statement in terms of how private and public funding can work well together but I'd love to come back to that energy and to the energy that actually brought Irene from America where she grew up to be a driver and an influencer in this economic Miracle right now what brought you back and what are you seeing on the ground right now Irene for me personally just to see my way of life
and how I grew up become a global phenomenon is a little bit crazy because I grew up in America in an American Suburban House my grandmother making kimchi in a tub hosing down lettuce and coming home to the smell of pendant and sesame oil not bacon or bread and my mom slapping on 10 different face serums and lotions so it's it's what I grew up seeing and you know because of the era of this digital and social media we've been able to be discovered by the world and we're so excited that we're able to share
our way of life and my favorite thing to do to come home after Fashion Week is slap on a face mask heat up my bowl of rice with my mom's kimchike and turn on Netflix and turn on Crash Landing on you I mean you mentioned yesterday in our conversation that you love kimchi so much you have your own canned variety can you tell us some other products and just exciting things in your ecosystem under the irina's good brand my ecosystem is just my lifestyle I think everything that I've been able to share with the world
is something that I grew up with and um you know even showing my my culture through social media and my platforms has always been very organic and the fact that we couldn't find kimchi in Seattle and now that we're selling kimchi worldwide globally is great and peeping Bob and kimbap is everywhere and and K Beauty is everywhere in K fashion and just the fact that the friends and my colleagues and people that I grew up watching on k-dramas are on billboards and winning Oscars and selling out stadiums worldwide is just incredible I'd love to extend
that and also turn to Rosalie to talk about this phenomenon of really localized cultural expertise that is being very uh thoughtfully channeled abroad we talked about cultural Technologies the way that some of the players between let's say Los Angeles and Korea are really having impact and at Chanel we're really focused in this idea of creating conditions for artists to DARE in their local spaces of course the BNL in Korea has been so exciting Busan Film Festival has really shown the spotlight on the most diverse voices that you can find but I'd love to hear how
that bridge between America and Korea especially in music and film has really generated this kind of bridge which is really singular this is really the most exciting exporter in Asia at the moment that's having this incredible impact with the globalized message yes I think um there is a to to facet to the uh to the coin on the one side for example you have the film industries that is really much looking at the local narrative but has this um Universal appeals such as for example parasites as you mentioned where I think the the issues around
social inequalities is really Rife in Korea and we talk about what we call hell Tucson it was on being the dynasty right before um Korea but it's considered as hell design because the uh sort of um the hierarchical structure the patriarchal society the social inequalities are really enhanced at this period as it is in many parts of the world so even if it's a local narrative it has this kind of impact that is touching many people around the world but then on the other hand you have Industries like the K-pop industries that is using almost
something that Korea has been subjected to for quite a while through Colonial period or through the American Military presence on the Korean peninsula where you get to have a foreign influence is constantly in permeating your own culture and it is becoming part of your own culture you're digesting it and so by reversing the process if you'd like they are approaching um K-pop culture in a way where um there is a sort of link that you can Bridge with your audience wherever you go so if you go to China you tend to sing in Chinese you
also have Incorporated a member from China from Thailand into your members group and you also creating partnership with local Industries in order to not only promote Korean pop culture but also try to see thailands locally that you can then grow following potentially the pattern that they have created in Korea so Irene who should we be looking at you are famously friends with all of the coolest Korean kids on the planet uh and you said the military so that's an interesting Dynamic BTS getting drafted makes headlines all over the world can you give us an idea
of who we should be looking at what you think is particularly exciting um right now I mean definitely all the Korean films and the dramas but right now at the moment my favorite K-Pop group is this new group called new jeans new jeans new jeans they're kind of been taking uh over Korea at the moment in Asia and they're just this like new refreshing girl group they're still very young but all of them are so talented and they all speak English and their songs are very catchy and you just like want to dance when you
hear the song sing along so new jeans is like the moment right now no to the DJ tonight yes I have it on my playlist if you want it okay we respond to that challenge um it's really exciting uh to think about that um and also to appreciate that I guess with this kind of power comes responsibility and so how do you feel about taking on the responsibility of translating Korean culture abroad um I think I've just been very lucky to grow up both in America and in Korea and thanks to social media and all
these different channels like YouTube and being able to play football on Korean TV um I've been able your money on who are your odds what are you thinking what's happening next guitar I don't want to say I don't want to jinx it okay but um but just being able to grow up in both worlds and being able to share my experiences to my Korean audience but as well as my Global audience now thanks to social media as a korean-american and just share my stories organically and see what's going on and what I'm into and what
my friends are into and what we're what skin care routine I'm doing that day and just moments with my grandma and my mom in Korea and just spending time I think it's it's it's been really great that's really interesting because I think it was that also transgenerational transfer that we saw that was incredibly exciting in September the art world was looking around thinking what is incredibly exciting and then we said everyone is Young it's this youth it's this excitement uh and it is this transgenerational transmission but the idea that it is really happening among a
generation for whom there's an optimism that you're not seeing in a lot of perhaps the European world right now yeah what's interesting is that some of the shows that we're going to be seeing in the next 18 months are coming through Michael govin to LACMA and to the Guggenheim Museum Rosie can you give us an idea over the next 18 months you heard it here first but the art world is really post how you at the VNA going to explode with this deeper insight into Korean culture I believe from 1897 which is as far as
the LACMA show will take it back can you give us an idea Rosalie from your world what you expect to be seeing from this incredible moment that you have brought out well I hope that um it will continue to to produce um new content interesting content I would have a approval appeal but I think what is interesting with Halu and hopefully that's going to happen next is how new technologies are always bringing a new way of producing Distributing and consuming culture and I think whoever is going to have coal for example with the metaverse and
its possibilities would be also something that would expand how the culture is nowadays consume and have access to a wider audience as well regardless of access to Technologies as we for some some of us have discussed yesterday I think this is something that I'm very much looking forward to now one of the highlights of the VNA show is of course the collaboration with Google arts and culture and I must admit over the weekend last weekend our CTO at Chanel sent a clip of himself doing the dance and he said everyone get over quickly to the
VNA before our exact room to Korea in February and so wanted to take that idea the collaboration that you had can you give us a moment on actually how that works at the end of the show so we can understand how you bring K-pop and dance into that and then maybe look at the social platforms cacao or others just so we can conclude the session with a great understanding of which technology we're coming from Beyond the Galaxy cars that we know are also having increasing influence abroad can you give us a moment on that so
what we developed this Google dance interactive with a local choreographer called Baby tripping regularly working with ETS or PSY and sugar from BTS and I think we wanted to show that actually Kpop is just not a genre of the music but also an immersive experience that is combining lyrics sound as well as choreography and the visuals and the choreography is always forgotten but it plays an important a huge role in the fandoms that is created around Kpop and so we wanted to bring that out and we had a team of choreographers in Seoul Google had
a team in Paris and in London and we were in in the VNA and trying to just coordinate and sure that everybody was on par and we tested and it was a very fun and interesting collaboration and this is reflected in the way it comes out in the exhibition where everybody from 8 to 88 I had to go actually at the dance interactive and as soon as you followed the instruction you get filmed and your image is immediately projected onto a wall and you become part of a collective creating a whole dance choreography and it
makes you look even if you are a beginner is a complete non-dancers like I am you look amazing because Google has created it so that you float in the air with the colors and the back dances so it's an amazing experience I invite you all to come and have a go fantastic and Irene in terms of the technology I mean I know you have nearly 3 million followers on Instagram but that is just the tip of the iceberg what technologies and platforms are important to you in spreading your message um I think just the DNA
of our culture as well especially coming from a war-torn country like we've managed to evolve especially with all these new technologies we have the fastest internet in the world I would say it's like 5G LTE you know it's like six bars of Wi-Fi so just being able to amplify our culture through these um different platforms we don't use Google we use Naver which is our local kind of Hub of search engine and we have cacao talk we work through cacao talk we share our stories through cacaotalk so we have these individual platforms so even with
Instagram it was fairly new in Korea it's only been about maybe eight years that it actually that actually celebrities in Korea started using it so I think those the combination of all of those platforms really just like gave us more exposure outside of Korea and to the world so for me it's all of them Tick Tock I mean during covet it was Tick-Tock and YouTube and then now football I'm I'm on this show in Korea that it's a reality show and we have these teams that there's like a singer team an actress team and I'm
on the model team and we all came together to play football and we're very serious about it the bruises on your hands the bruises are real the tears are real um I cracked my rib twice um we're already on season three but also like the genuine realness how these Korean TV shows just capture us I think just gives an emotional connection to the audience because we're just really there playing football and it's just all of us together passionate about one thing and the ways that we um show it it's just very genuine well thank you
for the emotional connection that you have forged with the audience today it was incredibly exciting to have you both here thank you to business of fashion to Imran for entrusting me with this incredible panel and I have also been in North Korea which we can discuss at the bar tonight while we listen to new genes but again a tremendous thank you and I'm so excited to hear what the rest of the panelists share on this incredibly vital topic thank you thank you
