How South Korea's music, TV and films were primed for the viral moment
On election day in 2008, Seung Bak and his business partner went to a Korean broadcaster's outpost in Los Angeles with $50,000 of their savings, asking to license Korean television dramas to stream online.
They were met with quizzical stares. Who outside the Korean diaspora would watch Korean shows, much less pay for them? Would American TV viewers all of a sudden start reading subtitles? And what the heck even is streaming?
It would be several more years before Netflix's own streaming business took off in earnest and "binge-watching" became a couch sport. It was well before — it is hard to even imagine now — BTS, "Parasite," then "Squid Game" created a South Korean cultural output that captured the world's imagination and redefined how entertainment transcends borders.
Bak and his fellow Korean American entrepreneur Suk Park, though, were already seeing a groundswell of demand for Korean content in the U.S. and
