Make Way for Miky Lee: How the Super Producer Took South Korean Pop Culture Global

variety.com:

Miky Lee, the enigmatic vice chair of South Korea entertainment conglomerate CJ ENM, grew up believing in the simple dictum from her grandfather that would prove to be the guiding principle of her life and work: “No culture, no country.”An heiress to the Samsung fortune, Lee has spent decades enhancing her family’s long legacy as business titans and innovators who were instrumental in building Korea’s postwar economic infrastructure.

Her grandfather, who also launched a newspaper and radio and TV stations, believed that Korea would never become a strong nation without forums for nurturing and celebrating the nation’s distinctive traits, traditions and history.Lee has taken the family mission global in recent years, working tirelessly as an investor and a dealmaker to advance the interests of both her companies and her cultural homeland.

The recent explosion of Korean pop culture, from hitmakers BTS to Netflix’s “Squid Game” to CJ’s own Oscar-winning movie “Parasite,” simply would not have happened without the efforts of Lee, who is being recognized as Variety’s International Media Woman of the Year to coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8.

As CJ ENM makes its biggest foray into the West yet with its recent acquisition of production-distribution company Endeavor Content, Lee says she’s still following her family’s mantra.“The basic philosophy is just: We are all about supporting the next generation, nurturing the talent and supporting the creators,” Lee tells Variety in a rare sit-down interview at CJ America’s Century City headquarters.As Lee notes, Korea’s splashy arrival on the global entertainment scene has been 25 years in the making.“Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho is thankful for the company’s.