The Birth of Korean Cool Quotes

“If Korea were a person, it would be diagnosed as a neurotic, with both an inferiority and a superiority complex.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Irony is that special privilege of wealthy nations;”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“You may have an iPhone, for example, but its microchips are made by Apple’s biggest competitor—the Korean electronics company Samsung.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“K-pop export model: the star-making process is so unpleasant that there are not many countries whose aspiring stars would put up with it. Korean youth, meanwhile, are used to intense sadomasochistic academic pressure, extreme discipline, constant criticism, and zero sleep. Of”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Basically, Koreans are the Marlboro Men of Asia.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“These kinds of mini-enterprises...prolonged the precious, Elysian period of childhood in a way I did not see in the US, where kids started hanging out at the mall and acted like teeny boppers from age 9 or 10.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“When I asked why StarCraft 2 in particular was so popular in Korea, he said, “The game ends quickly, so you can start a new one,” echoing one of the traits for which Koreans are best known—impatience. “Koreans like games that are fast and they like to compete.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“The teachers never explained what this debt was all about, but we knew it was an embarrassment on the level of a national bedwetting.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Please write your name on the envelope before you put your poop in, because you’ll find it difficult to write on it afterward.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“First-worlders have the luxury of not having to think about waste elimination very much. But for a third-worlder, poop is a big preoccupation.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Szokujące, jak wiele osób uważa, że nie musisz się tłumaczyć z tego, iż kogoś lubisz, lecz nielubienie należy uzasadnić mocnymi argumentami.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Right now the third world countries are too poor for most western nations to care about. This is where Korean has a peculiar, unreproducible advantage over ever single other national that has been a global pop culture power: it was once a third world country. Thus Korea understands the stages of other nations' development; it has carefully studied these cultures to determine what kinds of "K-culture" products would be most favored there. And Korean economists are hard at work gauging the rate at which these nations will become wealthier and have purchasing power. You can bet that once the citizens of these countries are able to afford to buy mobile phones and washing machines, they'll buy Korean brands. Why? They're already hooked on Korea the Brand. If this sounds like a national campaign, that's because it is. The South Korean government has made the Korean Wave the nation's number one priority. (p. 6)”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“There is another, bleaker reason why Korea has little reason to fear that other countries will try to emulate the K-pop export model: the star-making process is so unpleasant that there are not many countries whose aspiring starts would put up with it. Korean youth, meanwhile, are used to intense masochistic academic pressure, extreme discipline, constant criticism, and zero sleep.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“K-culture has the potential to be a powerful diplomatic tool. I'm convinced that the late Korean president Kim Daejung will be proven right in his prediction that Haley, not politics will bring north and south together. North Korean black marketers are literally risking their lives to smuggle in copies of South Korean videos and dramas. In 2009, a North Korean defector to the south told Time magazine that in North Korea, bootleg American movies fetched 35 cents on the black market, whereas South Korean movies cost $3.75, because the punishment for being caught with the latter is much more severe.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“[Hooni Kim] is pleased at the global Hallyu phenomenon, but he doesn't think that food has a place in Hallyu. "For me food is so much more real than a pop song or a video," he said. As with all great chefs I've met, he talks about food as a man would talk about a woman he's in love with. Once more adopting his lyric speech rhythms, he said, "Looking, hearing is one thing. Tasting, touching is another. Smelling and tasting is the heart and soul of what Korea is. As much as pop culture wants to globalize, food is the best way for Koreans to share their soul and culture." Turning the expression "you are who you eat" on its head, Kim said, "No. You eat who you are. No one describes who you are like your food.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“My memorization skills were so well honed at Korean school that it's now become an involuntary and automatic reflex. I have almost perfect recall of conversations I've had going back about twenty years or so. If required, I can recite an entire thirty-minute exchange verbatim. Sometimes this is useful, as when I'm arguing with a male companion about whether one of us did or did not break some previously made promise. However, my gift of recall is very annoying to other people. They forgot to tell us at Korean school that memory does not lead to a happy life.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Perhaps the person who best expressed Korea's fearlessness, ambition, and never-ending gall was Korean music mogul Jin-young Park (head of the record label JYP). When asked by western music executives, "Where are you from?" he would reply cryptically, "I am from the future.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Koreans know from experience that everyone must rise together, or not at all. Another important lesson from Korea’s success is this apparent paradox: Being number one matters, but being first does not. Almost every area in which Korea achieved dominance occurred in territory that was well covered by other nations.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“I was teased constantly by children calling me “Yankee,” which was slightly amusing, and mimicking my Korean, which was less amusing. I wouldn’t say that the kids were openly cruel, but I have never felt more culturally segregated before or since. Mostly, they just looked at me with incomprehension. For a child, that feeling of being dumb and mute is utterly alienating. Language aside, I was simply a misfit. My facial expressions and mannerisms were all wrong; I made intent, direct eye contact with my betters when I should have been sheepishly looking down at my shoes. When”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“On the one hand, Korea has become quite a welcoming place for foreigners; many westerners visiting Korea share glowing reports about Korean hospitality and how modern the country seems. On the other hand, Koreans raised abroad have a very hard time smoothly transitioning into Korean society. I am no exception. I”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Onerously, Korea still has not managed to wean itself off its reliance on the chaebols—the mega conglomerates like Samsung and Hyundai. True, these companies have clothed and fed the nation since the 1960s, but they are far too powerful, now more than ever: in 2012, the top ten companies in Korea generated over 75 percent of the nation’s GDP.2 If one of these companies fails, the whole nation”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“For the first time in Korea history—perhaps in any nation’s history—the Korean government is putting huge financial and political resources behind something as intangible as “discovery.” No guidelines, no maps; just money and faith.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Hallyu started with Samsung.” In other words, the popularity of Korean music and movies is hard to separate from the confidence that Samsung created in Korea the Brand.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Korean-made video games now constitute a quarter of the world market. Even most Koreans have no idea how big Korea’s gaming industry.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables was required reading in Korean schools, as was Alphonse Daudet’s short story, “La Dernière Classe,” for both my parents’ and my generation. Set in the Alsace in 1870 or 1871, around the time of the Franco-Prussian war, Daudet’s story features a schoolteacher, Monsieur Hamel, who announces that it is to be his last day teaching, because all the French staff are to be replaced by Germans. His last lesson of the class is to impress on them the beauty of the French language. He tells the class, at great personal risk, that as long as you keep your language, you will never be a slave.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“According to Kim, 1998 was the turning point for Korean films entering the international arena. “In the fifty years up to 1997,” said Kim, “only four Korean films were screened at the Cannes Film Festival,” and even those were screened out of competition. “But in 1998, four Korean films were invited to Cannes.” What”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Cinema is yet another area in which government intervention in culture paid off in spades. Korea once again demonstrated its unique magic trick: by passing a few new laws and fertilizing the right areas with money, it was able to spur explosive creativity and an entire film renaissance. In”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“K-dramas are soft power in action; they subtly and overtly promote Korean values, images, and tastes to their international audience.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Korean dramas also have huge audiences in Latin America—perhaps because of their emotional similarity to telenovelas. In South America, Korean dramas have become hits in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. In Paraguay, some Korean dramas were dubbed not only in Spanish but also in the indigenous local dialect of Guarani. In”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“dramas are now beloved by Asia as a whole. In Taiwan, the airtime devoted to Korean dramas was getting so out of control that in 2012, Taiwan’s National Communications Commission called upon a Taiwanese network to reduce its primetime showings of Korean programs and increase the number of hours devoted to non-Korean shows.3 Korean”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture