The Tim Ferriss Show - #707: Live from South Korea — Steve Jang on Korea’s Exploding “Soft Power,” The Poverty-to-Power Playbook, K-Pop, “Han” Energy, Must-See Movies, Export Economies, and Much More

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Starting point is 00:05:25 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. The Tim Ferriss Show from the usual format. I am interviewing a world-class performer, in this case, my good friend Steve Jang, who is one of those people, one of those tech founders and entrepreneurs and investors who seems to be able to look around corners to see things before they go mainstream. And he has an impeccable record. But in this particular sit-down, we are in person in Seoul, South Korea. I had wanted to visit Korea for 20 plus years and had never pulled the trigger, finally did. I always wanted to go with a friend who could show me around and Steve Jang is such a person. And Korea exceeded every expectation on every level in every dimension, it really blew my mind. And so I wanted to do an episode discussing all things Korea. So in this conversation, we talk about the K-wave that is the exploding soft power of Korea, which is not accidental,

Starting point is 00:06:20 by the way, the poverty to power playbook, so to speak. How did they go from, I don't want to say a backwater, but a very handicapped, economically handicapped country to being an incredible export economy with a global presence, not just in entertainment, but in hardware, in all sorts of technology, et cetera. Number of concepts like Han, must-see movies, and much more. And before we dive into Steve's bio, I wanted to share his top must-see Korean movies. So I'm just going to list them out, give you some Scooby snacks in the very beginning. Here we go. Old Boy, Wailing, that's W-A-I-L-I-N-G. So Old Boy, Wailing, The Handmaiden, Memories of Murder, Parasite, many of you will have seen this, and this comes up in the conversation, Burning, Minari, M-I-N-A-R-I, Broker, which is from 2022,

Starting point is 00:07:15 and Joint Security Area. All right, so who is Steve Jang? You can find him on Twitter at Steve Jang, J-A-N-G. Steve is the founder and managing partner at Kindred Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund based in San Francisco. He is one of the founder, now investor generation of VCs that arose out of the last technology cycle. And he and I have been advisors to a lot of the same companies, invested in a lot of the same companies. He is very, very good at what he does. Steve is one of the top 100 venture capital investors in the world, according to the Forbes Midas list of top venture capital investors, and was ranked number 45 in 2023. He's also a Korean American, a gyopo, we'll explain what gyopo is, who is deeply invested and involved in both the technological and cultural worlds in the US and Asia. He is

Starting point is 00:08:03 often a bridge. Previously, Steve was an early advisor to and angel investor in Uber, and then an early stage investor in some names you might recognize, Coinbase, Postmates, Poshmark, Tonal, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Humane, the AI device platform that is getting a lot of buzz right now. In fact, he helped Uber, Coinbase, and Blue Bottle Coffee, among others, to expand into Korea and Japan. He's very familiar with both places. As an entrepreneur, Steve co-founded companies in the consumer internet, mobile, and crypto space. And on top of all of that, in the film and music world, he is an executive producer. His most recent film is a documentary, Nam Joon-paik. Moon is the Oldest TV,

Starting point is 00:08:44 which tells the story of the greatest Korean artist and father of digital video art, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023. His next film is a documentary about Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum. You can find Steve on Twitter, as I mentioned, at Steve Jang. You can find Kindred Ventures at kindredventures.com, and you can find Steve on LinkedIn at stevejang1. And now without further ado, thanks for your patience, folks. Please enjoy this very wide-ranging conversation that I loved, held live in person in Seoul, South Korea.

Starting point is 00:09:23 So, Steve Jang, nice to see you, sir. Good to see you sir good to see you thanks for having me absolutely welcome to the i'm thrilled to be here because i've wanted to visit korea for 20 plus years it's wild that you haven't been here yet. I've been in the Seoul airport multiple times en route to Japan. Doesn't count. Doesn't count. Doesn't count.

Starting point is 00:09:51 And then I was on a flight, as I often am, and I watched a few things. I watched the movie Past Lives, which is an excellent movie. Great movie. Strongly recommend. Amazing.

Starting point is 00:10:02 And then watched, since I was sort of getting tapped for the Korea high after watching that movie, I went to a K-pop documentary, which was also in the in-flight menu. Very well done. And as soon as I got off the flight, I think that's when I texted you and I was like, Steve, when are you taking me to Korea? And you're like, actually, I'm going to be in Korea. And that is how I pulled the trigger, bought a ticket, and we find ourselves here. And Seoul has exceeded, and the Korean people and the Korean language on all levels have exceeded my expectations. And the question that kept popping into my mind is, why aren't more people coming here? Why aren't more people

Starting point is 00:10:41 talking about Seoul in the same way that people talk about Tokyo, for instance? Why don't we just maybe start there and we'll see where things go? It's really because of that K-wave that you described has happened recently. Very recently. I mean, I think people have been fascinated by going to Japan and going to onsens in Kyoto and Tokyo and experiencing all that for three, four decades now. Yeah. And it's become a favorite for people who love Eastern culture. They love design, food.

Starting point is 00:11:13 And Tokyo and Kyoto are amazing, right? And then Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong have been on the map for a century. Korea was a developing country. You have to remember that from 1905 to 1945, it was annexed and colonized by Japan. Right. And so it was a poor country. It was in an oppressed state. So it wasn't a place that you would want to visit. Right.

Starting point is 00:11:38 As an outsider. And then the Korean War happens. And the country is destroyed and split into two. Again, not something you want to visit, but it had the fastest rate of economic growth of any country across three decades after that. And so what happened there is that it was an industrial country that was still rough, that was still trying to rebuild. And again, not a place that you would go for tourism,

Starting point is 00:12:04 not a place that you would go for tourism, not a place that you would go to experience culture. But that really changed in the 80s. You started to see Korean movies and music become something that was very unique and very Korean, and not something that was sort of formulaic from another country. And so I think in the 90s is when K-pop really started to become a thing and expand outward. And there was a diaspora happening of Korean immigrants going outward, especially to the US, but also for decades going into the Middle East because of industrial jobs and the labor needs of those countries. South America has one of the largest Korean diaspora populations. You go to Brazil, Chile, Colombia, there's a lot of Koreans in South America. And then in Europe, France and the UK or in Germany were also landing spots.

Starting point is 00:12:54 So all of this is happening more recently in time. Yeah, the main actor or one of the main actors, Korean actors in past lives, name is? Taeho. Taeho. Yeah. Taeho was born in germany yeah and what do you call koreans overseas what is it it was kind of a i don't want to say a derogatory term that koreans had for koreans who left but it had sort of a negative connotation i remember it was a little bit of a negative connotation when I was in Korea in the 80s and 90s as a kid. And then now it's become like fully accepted.

Starting point is 00:13:30 It's an accepted and used and practical term, right? It's not something that is considered negative anymore. So I want to highlight something that you said, which is this rate of growth. I've observed, for instance, in Seoul, that the taxis, the actual cars, look like something out of Blade Runner in many cases. They're very futuristic. This is a very futuristic town. And you put a post on Instagram with a video of this robot that was sort of being defended by this bodyguard from, I guess, the KTS or KBS, rather. And it is very much a glimpse, I feel, into the future of sorts when you visit Seoul, certain portions of Seoul. In contrast, if you go to, say, Japan, the taxis

Starting point is 00:14:15 look like they're many, many, and they are many, many decades old. If I compare my experience when I was say in Japan in 1992 to my experience in Japan now my perception is because I've been back many times not that much has changed certainly things have changed but it's not dramatic how would you compare like the last 10 20 30 years in Korea and maybe technology penetration is one way to unpack this. But you were talking about, for instance, even from a socioeconomic perspective, some of the poorest people will still have technological access that would trump most of what people experience in the US. There are definitely modern parts of what is happening here in the economy and the society, but it's a city of opposites. I see the modern parts that you see, but I think that there's also a dichotomy between the old and the decay, as well as this very modern

Starting point is 00:15:18 and very futuristic aspect in one city, in one country. It's a city in transition. It's a country in transition. We walked around neighborhoods where these were buildings that were 100 years old. And then we saw buildings that were recently put up with steel and glass and with giant LED screens. This balance or this sort of conflict that you see out there is really a function of something that didn't happen in Japan, really. I think Japan rebuilt very quickly after World War II and became modern very quickly.

Starting point is 00:15:54 For Korea, it's really in the last couple of decades that this has happened. And it's happened in a way where Koreans are holding still onto the past. There are cafes that are beautiful cafes that are built in bombed out shoe factories. And it has so much character and history. It kind of reminds me of when I visit Berlin, that vintage classic architecture, almost brutal from that era.

Starting point is 00:16:20 And then very modern, progressive concepts of architecture and culture coexisting together. And I see a lot of similarities between Berlin and Seoul, more than I would see it in, let's say, Hong Kong and Seoul. In Tokyo, like you said, the taxi cabs are classic cabs, but they are immaculate. They are immaculate. In Korea, the taxi cabs are changing by the days. It's this new

Starting point is 00:16:45 Hyundai car, this Kia car, and they're very modern, but they're almost disposable at this point because they're cycling through cars very quickly. And so there's this sort of rush or need to constantly innovate and improve here that doesn't hold on to the classics very well. And so I actually like to see a lot of the old school classic things still thriving here. And I hope it doesn't go away because it's part of the history. It's what makes Koreans really interesting today because like all the K-pop and the movies that you see, they're all rooted in the past and they're trying to do something new in the future this korean diaspora again we're called gyopo has fanned out globally and we're always sort of in between we're not fully american or british or french or korean american or korean french or korean british you're always a hyphenated

Starting point is 00:17:43 thing and then when you're back here it used to be that people could pick you out. They could pick you out by how you walked. Not even how you spoke, but how you walked and looked at people and your body language, your hairstyle, how you dressed. And they could pick you out as a foreigner. Now it's become a lot more of an in-and-out revolving door of different influences and foreigners. So it's become a lot more modern. But still, there's very much a Korean way to that. And I think that what's become very interesting over watching sort of the last 30 years of development has been this embrace of outside influences.

Starting point is 00:18:23 Korea was called the hermit kingdom. I remember going to Korean school in Los Angeles when I grew up. Every Saturday when everyone else was watching cartoons or playing soccer, I went to Korean school from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. I went to Van Nuys High School, public school, and this Korean school rented it from the L.A. Unified School District. And we'd go there. We'd learn Hanguk. We'd learn how to write and read.

Starting point is 00:18:51 And then you had a choice of an elective. Abacus, calligraphy, taekwondo, and the fan dance. So I picked taekwondo. And I tried abacus. I tried calligraphy. Really enjoyed it. So the things that stuck for me were taekwondo and calligraphy. This is my Saturday for eight years. So you're trying to preserve some of that learning and culture as you go out.

Starting point is 00:19:15 Now imagine in Korea, historically, in the shadow of China, and then more recently in the times in the 20th century under military rule and annexation by Japan. For them, in that time period, under Japanese rule, it was very harsh. Many Koreans were killed or forced to move to Japan to survive and make their way. But part of it was they were not allowed to speak Korean. They were not allowed to write in Korean. They were forced to take Japanese names. And so there was a whole diaspora that went to Japan in the 19th century, but also largely in the 20th century. So there are a lot of Koreans, ethnic Koreans that live in Japan, but it's a love-hate

Starting point is 00:19:59 relationship today that I see with Japan. They're trading partners, they're neighbors, they're allies when it comes to outsiders, but there's a lot of historical beef between them. But there's a lot of appreciation and love too, especially in the younger generations. Especially in the younger generations. I mean, when I was in high school and moved from a public school to a private school and I had the chance to start studying Japanese. A number of my friends in high school were Korean. And pretty Korean Korean. Like not Korean American.

Starting point is 00:20:32 Like they had come to the U.S. just to go to school. And then they went back to Korea generally. Or went to college and then went back to Korea. And the fact that I didn't have the historical context. But the fact that I was studying Japanese really bothered some of my friend's parents. I remember we went on a drive and the fact that I was so excited to be studying Japanese was not exciting to one of my friend's parents. Interesting. They were also quite a bit older, but their personal experience was just so different from mine.

Starting point is 00:21:01 They have really fresh memories. Super fresh. Of the annexation and the colonial rule. So let me throw out a couple of things that stand out to me here as

Starting point is 00:21:11 super interesting facets in Korea. The demonstrations which maybe we'll get to that's something I don't see as much of in a place like Japan's

Starting point is 00:21:22 I would say almost certainly it's not something you see as much of in China. You may see demonstrations I would say almost certainly it's not something you see as much of in China. You may see demonstrations everywhere, but I've seen a lot of demonstrations here. There are also a lot of preachers with, or at least a handful, preachers with megaphones. Is it predominantly Christian society here? It's, I think, other than the Philippines it's the only predominantly Christian Asian country.

Starting point is 00:21:48 Okay, so that's point one, which is certainly true if you drive around LA, a number of Korean churches, buses taking Koreans to church centers, there's that component. I have heard Korea described, and I have no education related to this but i've heard korea described as i was coming here and doing reading as the most confucian country in east asia that's right so maybe what does that mean for people who are like what does that actually mean it's sort of when you talk about a species of animal that has gone off to cross the body of water and goes to a new continent or a new island yeah and then everything changes on the body of water and goes to a new continent or a new island. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:22:25 And then everything changes on the origin continent. Right. And then somehow this strain of plant or this species of animal has— Continues to exist. Continues to exist. Yeah, it's a very unique thing now, right? And because it hasn't been influenced from the outside, like the origin point. And so Korea received the Confucian value system, filial piety,

Starting point is 00:22:49 a strong, strong focus on education and academics and scholarship, which came from China. But China went through its changes in the 20th century, right? Cultural revolution. And a lot of the classical Chinese concepts were removed for something more modern and populist. And so Korea is sort of the last bastion of this Confucian idealism in this way. And I think that's where you get a lot of this. People talk about the Korean education system and academics and the pressures. There's a lot of downsides and trade-offs for people. And that

Starting point is 00:23:26 really comes from that. Like even growing up in LA, you know, I was born in Korea. We immigrated over to Los Angeles. It was very much this very pedantic academic thing that was forced. And you see hagwons, which are Korean tutoring centers, that you won't see this anywhere else. We have friends in different cities that have kids. There's nothing like the Korean hagwon, which is the Korean word for a tutor or a tutoring center, a tutoring school. When school is done, you go to another school. Also, just to underscore when school is done,

Starting point is 00:24:04 so I was listening to this interview with a Korean language teacher somewhere in Oxford, I think. And they asked her how she would describe the difference between school in, say, the UK and school in Korea. And she said, oh, students in the UK, her English is pretty rough. And she's like, there's so much happier. She said, they end school at 3 p.m. She said, in Korea, I in school at 3 p.m she said in korea i ended school at 10 p.m yeah and then i went to the i mean the really intense hagwon but the cram school which also exists juku in in japan but it seems more intense here actually it seems it's more intense here

Starting point is 00:24:38 because she was saying i would come home from my regular school like 9 9, 10, then go to cram school, come home at 1 a.m., and then just repeat. That was- That sounds very extreme. That was her vibe. That is extreme. Well, I mean, even the gyopo, Korean diaspora, the Korean immigrants that move out, they create that in their landing city in Seattle, in San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta. Atlanta has one of the largest Korean American populations.

Starting point is 00:25:08 New York is the second largest Korean American population, second to Los Angeles. But if you go to these cities, there's a whole network of businesses and hagwons that are owned and operated by Korean American immigrants. And the churches are the landing point to connect with your community. So when you move over, you may not have any friends or relatives. They would go to the church. They might not have even been very religious, but it was the immigrants sort of Ellis Island of that city meeting point to get connected to people that looked like them and spoke like them and understood them.

Starting point is 00:25:45 That makes sense. But the hagwons are a very particular Korean thing. And I have a friend, Minjin Lee, who's the author of Pachinko, which is an incredible book. I've heard great things about from multiple people. I will admit this wholeheartedly that it's one of the few books where I just immediately am like in tears reading because it touches not only the history of Korean people, but also Koreans who moved out. Moved. And it takes place in Japan.

Starting point is 00:26:14 It's during the early 20th century and it follows a generational story about a family that's living in hardship in Japan. My mother's side actually was educated and raised in Japan. No kidding. Yeah. I did not know that. And so I have a different view and experience with that Korean-Japanese relationship through history. All the pictures, all the photos, we have old photos in my parents' home

Starting point is 00:26:43 of my great-grandfather and my great-great-grandfather. My dad's side, they're in very southern tip of Korea, and they're wearing very Korean peasant clothing. And you can tell it's 1800s Korea. And then my mother's side is wearing a three-piece suit with a fedora, a bowler hat, and a neatly trimmed mustache and is clearly living in Japan. And they lived in Tokyo and Kyoto. And so I have a very sort of ambivalent, complicated thing. I love going to Tokyo. I have a lot of Japanese friends. I have Japanese startup portfolio founders, and I love chatting with them. So for a younger generation of Koreans and Japanese, there's great harmony and diversity in that. And people move back and forth between Seoul and Tokyo as easily as we

Starting point is 00:27:31 move between like San Francisco and LA or New York and San Francisco. But it's interesting to see those influences. And I think when you look at the things that you've seen in your deep understanding of Japanese culture and language and Chinese culture and language, you will see that there are influences. You may not know the origin point, but you're like, that word sounds very similar. But where it diverges is it's these unique phrases and words that capture part of the feeling or the psyche and the soul of those people that is really fascinating. Totally. that capture part of the feeling or the psyche and the soul of those people. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:28:06 That is really fascinating. Totally. And we were talking about this. So explain what Natsukashi is in Japanese language. Yeah. So Natsukashi is a beautiful word. By the way, I love your pronunciation. Oh, thank you.

Starting point is 00:28:18 Thank you. Yeah. Better than a lot of Nisei in the US. Yeah. So Natsukashi, you'll run into this a lot in Japan and when someone comes across something that is nostalgic, which nostalgic

Starting point is 00:28:31 is not a word that gets used much in the U.S., but it's a literary word, not a spoken word. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:28:38 In the U.S. you might say, oh man, that brings back the memories or something like that, which is a little bit closer to natsukashi. It's also a little closer to saud natsukashi. It's also a little closer

Starting point is 00:28:45 to saudade in Brazilian Portuguese. It has a similar feeling to it. But natsukashi, they'd be like, ah, that's nostalgic. Natsukashi is pleasant nostalgia when something brings back the memories.

Starting point is 00:29:01 Positive. That word doesn't exist in korean yes so you need to say more so so we have things that revolve in korean language around suffering and pain sorrow regret sorrow rage oppression angst it's the way i describe to Regret. Sorrow. Rage. Oppression. Angst. It's the way I describe to people who have been to Tokyo a lot, and they ask, they go, should I go to Seoul? I'm like, absolutely. It's so fun.

Starting point is 00:29:34 It's so electric right now. The ideas are new. They're embracing outside influences. You should go now, because you will miss it when it's fully dialed in. And it's going to be unrecognizable five or 10 years from now, right? It's just moving so quickly. I mean, I come like three, four times a year. And I don't feel the differences between each of those times. But I can look back and say, oh, three, four years ago, these things did not exist.

Starting point is 00:30:01 Even going on some of our walks in these neighborhoods that you hadn't been to in a handful of years. I walked in that neighborhood that I took you to, Samcheong-dong. I brought the blue bottle, brought one of the blue bottle coffee founders, and we had both invested in that company a long time ago, and they were interested to come to Japan and Korea. And so I met up with them in Japan, walked around different Tokyo neighborhoods with them, came to Seoul, did the same. They fell in love with that neighborhood because it had that very classic, old-school, vintage,

Starting point is 00:30:32 this is real Korea, real Seoul. It's a beautiful walking area. Really nice. And you saw it. There's actually real painters out with their easel painting nature and streets and life. It's so fun to see that. But when you see that, you'll think, oh, it's just like Tokyo.

Starting point is 00:30:49 Right? Because it's very quaint. It's very precise. It's very safe. Unbelievably clean. Awesome. But there are some buts. If you spend more than a few days here in Seoul,

Starting point is 00:31:02 you'll realize that what you are looking at is a city that might on the outset look like you're walking into Tokyo, but is actually the other side of the coin. They exist in the same dimension, but it is a very different vibe. I think you were talking, where are we talking? This might've been after a little bit of soju, but it's like the bizarro, Like when I used to watch the Superman cartoons in the mornings before going to school or whatever, there was like bizarro Superman who was like, look just like Superman. But I was like, wait a second, that's not Superman. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:31:35 It's different. Yeah, it's like in Stranger Things, they call it the upside down. Yeah, right. So the culture here is less polite in the protocol definition of the word. In Japan, it is very difficult for a Japanese person to say no very directly and bluntly to you. Very hard. Because it's very impolite for them to do that. It's almost a dishonor for them to behave that way towards you.

Starting point is 00:32:02 Yeah, so just a side note for folks. If you ever ask a Japanese person to do anything anything this could be at your hotel or whatever if they scratch their head and they go and they breathe in like that or they go if they say it's difficult that means no that means impossible generally if they start apologizing right away yeah then you know it's not going to happen right yeah like the word yeah like yeah where which gets translated literally into english and no like you almost never hear that word very rarely heard when i'm in japan i have to definitely take on a much more reserved and polite stance, more than I would in the US, more than I would even in Korea, because of that. And I respect that. In Korea, there's still a little bit

Starting point is 00:32:52 of that. I'm smirking so hard because I'm thinking, you're doing less child's pose in the tea houses when you have a low back pain. Yes. We went to this, it's so cute tea house it was just ah with this little like so he had like a little courtyard in the middle with the manicure trees and poor steve his low back was killing him and so he's stretching but it's kind of in the hallway and these two women just glitched so hard because they didn't know how to contend with it. But yes, I enjoyed it.

Starting point is 00:33:25 It's my fault. And because I'm still an American at heart. And so what we're talking about here is the other part of me, my family's history. But so I have to try, right? Because it's that different. And so in Korea, they're much more likely to say no. They're much more likely to challenge you directly.

Starting point is 00:33:44 Much more likely to say, Mr. Chairman, you likely to challenge you directly. Much more likely to say, Mr. Chairman, you need to eat less. Yeah. In a sarcastic way, call me, Mr. Chairman, you probably should go on a diet so your back doesn't hurt, which is, you know, I love my food, but I really didn't need to hear that

Starting point is 00:33:58 from the well-meaning ajima with the yakuza perm. Yeah. So the experience that people will have is that it's not as lonely as it might be with being an expat in Japan. My wife lived 10 years as an expat in Tokyo. And when we were dating, I'd visit her a lot. And before that, I would visit Tokyo a lot

Starting point is 00:34:19 because I had an investor there and we were working on something. And so I was there frequently for years. And I got to understand a little bit about the experiences of her and her expat friends. It's one part elevated because they're expats, they're foreigners, but one part sort of, they're not part of main society, right? And so in Korea, and especially in in cities and you have to make a distinction between the countryside in korea rural areas in smaller towns and then seoul and busan the big

Starting point is 00:34:52 cities it's a very different experience you may not enjoy living in a small town in korea because it really is you know still stuck in that 60s and 70s environment, both from a material aspect and utilities and just lifestyle. It's very modern in the cities. So there's a really harsh divide to the point where everyone wants to move to the big city. And so these smaller towns are emptying out. And there's a big problem with that. There's some pluses to that, but there's some really strong minuses as well. Yeah. But the foreigners feel like it's easier to integrate here.

Starting point is 00:35:29 Maybe integrate's the wrong word, but they feel more welcome. I think it's still difficult to integrate in any of these cities. You're always going to be the other. But I think that you can get more direct response and that blunt energy of an actual response rather than a polite response. Yeah, just for people who might be interested. So in Japan, they've got this expression. So I feel this in Japan too, which is a real bummer for me because when I was 15, You feel like you paid your dues. Oh man, I've studied so much Japanese.

Starting point is 00:36:02 And also just living in Japan when I was 15, 15-year-olds are kind of 15-year-olds in most places, right? They're goofy, they're loud, they're fun, they're open-minded. And I felt welcomed with open arms, by and large, by the kids around me. Because that kids are kind of kids and they're curious too and shameless when i go back to japan now i'm still very close with my host family 30 years later or whatever and still really close with my host family and if they introduce me to their friends everything's great but as an adult going to japan there's a much stronger line that i feel separates me as an other. It's very hard. And there's an expression, there's like honne, and then tatemae. So honne is like, I'm very simplistically translating here, but it's like how you really feel and how you really are.

Starting point is 00:36:53 And then tatemae is like what you put in front as your sort of forward-facing thing with someone else. And there's also something in Japanese called tanin-gyo-gyo, which is like stranger formality, where you're polite, but there's a wall. And my experience just in a week, I'm like, what do I know? But my experience here, and you have to be careful if you're staying at a hotel,

Starting point is 00:37:19 you can't be like, oh, people are so friendly. It's like, well, if you're staying at a nice hotel, of course, they're paid to be friendly. So you got to get outside. But as I've been walking around- Which we have been. We have been. Yeah. And people are friendly. My feeling is friendly. Maybe open is a better word. Like a bit more open. Yeah, they're more open.

Starting point is 00:37:34 Direct. But it's direct, positive, direct, negative, maybe. I'm talking a lot, but I'm excited to be here. When I was in high school and i met my first korean koreans as like my first interaction this was in this was in new hampshire that's right at st paul's yeah and nicest guys until they flipped until that switch flipped and their eyes got really big and the k-rage came on the scene which is not something you see as much in japan like people people get pissed everywhere but a wise man once said to me that you go to japan and a lot of people get drunk it's a

Starting point is 00:38:17 drinking culture but they like they get drunk and then they tend to like people fall asleep like on the subway and so on you don't see a lot of fights, but maybe that's different in Korea. It's just a different vibe. I think that might be part of the exports, right? There's K-beauty, K-pop, K-dramas, and there's K-rage. I don't know. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. There is a lot happening in the US and global Thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. place to earn more on your savings, and that's Wealthfront. Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. And right now you can earn 5% APY, that's the annual percentage yield, with the Wealthfront cash account. That's more than 10 times more interest than if you left

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Starting point is 00:39:53 That is a beautiful word with a beautiful meaning. Incredible. When I first heard it, I think it was my wife who had lived in Japan for 10 years, she had used it with a friend and she had explained it to me. And I was like, that's so idealistic and just lovely, right? But I was like, there's no such thing in Korean. The experience of the Korean people, it has not been an independent and whole country since 1905. It is divided since the Korean War. And there's a lot of pain and struggle that happens with families divided by North and South.

Starting point is 00:40:28 Side note, we'll put this in the show notes. You sent me some YouTube videos. Yeah. Which were old broadcasts of families being reunited. That shit messed me up. I mean, not reunited. Reunited for like an hour. An hour, and then they're separated again. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:40:43 And I'm not Korean. i don't have the background but just the the holy shit the the emotion and the facial expressions oh i was tearing up just watching it's brutal it's not relief of trauma it's new trauma on top of long-standing trauma yeah what we're talking about is you'll put, you'll put it in the show notes, but the North and South Korean governments had, at certain times when they get along, they'll try to do some great like olive branch moves to reunite families. And they had the TV station film it and they set up a whole area and they brought buses down. And it turned out to be not cathartic at all, but reopening pain. One of the things I noticed was in the notes, I guess it was in text,

Starting point is 00:41:31 on one of the YouTube videos that you sent me, it indicated that initially this television special was supposed to be 45 minutes long, but there was such an outpouring. There were like 100,000 plus people who came and stood in front of various government offices and stationed out trying to petition to be part of this program that ended up lasting. I don't think I'm getting this wrong. I think it was like 100 plus days that it kept going. So first off, this is the last of the divided countries by Western capitalism and Eastern communism. So Germany, they've sorted it out. Vietnam, they've sorted it out. At this point, North Korea and South Korea is the last sort of evidence of the really

Starting point is 00:42:15 like caustic, divisive Cold War. And so there are families. It's not two different people, right? It's not by religion, which we see a lot of today unfortunately it's the same people and the same families that are split and torn from each other so imagine if you have an opportunity to be reunited for an hour and then separate an hour oh god so is that cathartic or is that actually more trauma yeah and so i remember watching this as a child i was in la and my parents were watching it la

Starting point is 00:42:53 had a big enough korean american community where you had korean tv you had a channel i remember watching it and my parents were like broke down crying and you know for me it was like absorbing it as a child but understanding it for the first time. Like that history and what that would feel like. And I think that's like a very strong, moving example of how Korean people feel. In the last 120 years, they have not had their own whole country and people. It's North and South. Before that, it was Korean War.

Starting point is 00:43:28 Millions of Koreans died in that war between Russia and China and the U.S. And the battleground was their country, their homes, their farmland, their cities. So the number of people that died in that war, I don't think people really talk about it. I appreciate the magnitude of people that died in that war i don't think people really talk about it appreciate the magnet there's something about like 10 million chinese soldiers came across and at some point or something like that they're just numbers that people don't really think what we talk about world war ii we talk about vietnam but there's not much about the korean war so and then the korean civilians and families that died. Right before that, they were liberated from Japanese rule just like five years before that. And so five years before that, they spent 40 years, 1905 to 1945, under Japanese rule.

Starting point is 00:44:18 And we've already talked about that. That was very oppressive. It was a forced assimilation. And there were a lot of deaths that occurred as part of that and impression and there are a lot of movies by the way that detail this you know this is i don't want to take us too off track because i know we're headed towards hun yeah first yeah but what are the main storylines that you see in movie and dramas? Because these say a fair bit. Yeah, this is what we're talking about, which is in language and in stories,

Starting point is 00:44:54 you get a sense for the people, maybe without even meeting in real life a person from that culture and society. The tropes or the themes, the storylines that you hear in movies one is about north south korea there's literally rom-coms about it there's action thrillers about it spy thrillers there's historical film you know detailing in a biopic, something that happened in the past. There's every kind of genre, but applied towards the North, South Korea history and conflict. Another one is the class struggle.

Starting point is 00:45:36 You've probably seen Parasite, which obviously won an Academy Award and was seen globally. But that is, director Bong, Bong Joon-ho, is one of the greatest Korean directors of all time. A lot of his films are very intense psychological thrillers. Apparently, that's pretty intense. A lot of them, you might look at it and say, oh, this one's like a murder mystery. This one's a psychological thriller.

Starting point is 00:46:00 This one is something else. But if you look at a lot of his movies, it's about class struggle. Does that mean, put another way, sort of lack of upward mobility? It's about the wealthy and the entitled and their mistreatment of the poorer working class that are immobile, but also there's complexity. It's not just good versus evil in that dichotomy. Both sides in those character sets are doing weird, crazy, off-putting things to each other, right?

Starting point is 00:46:35 And so that's why I think Korean movies are really well-embraced, because they don't follow a formula. They're nuanced. It's like swimming in an ocean of gray. Yeah. It's like swimming in an ocean of gray. Yeah. It's like swimming in the human mind where there's nothing totally pure. It's not a Marvel movie.

Starting point is 00:46:51 Right. And it's not a sort of like, it comes to a conclusion, act one, act two, act three, and now I feel good. And actually, one of the things I would say consistently about Korean film

Starting point is 00:47:02 is that it's both, and this is a conflict that can exist together at the same time. It's both entertaining and moving and inspiring. And you can also walk out feeling terrible. You can walk out feeling confused and like you need to go outside and get a breath of fresh air, sit down. If you're a smoker, you probably need a cigarette. If you're not a smoker, you probably need to take a walk and listen to some happy music. The intensity of Korean film then is also balanced with this

Starting point is 00:47:36 polar opposite of these crazy rom-coms that are so sugary and saccharine but funny. And that's really Korean culture, right? It's this crazy, full of friction opposites that you didn't think would coexist in one culture. Because I think people, Westerners, outsiders look at Japan and they say, this is ideal culture. This is ideal society. This is utopia almost to a lot of Westerners.

Starting point is 00:48:03 Everything is clean. Everyone is polite. Everything is in its right place. And they do things like take Italian pizza and actually make it better. Right? They take fried chicken. Oh, my God. Steve has seen me eat so much fried chicken here.

Starting point is 00:48:16 Korean fried chicken. It's the true KFC. Oh, my God. It's so good. The Korean culture, I think when Westerners or outsiders come and they actually experience it, and they see it in movies and K-pop, and they come here, and what they see is something that's a lot more realistic and nuanced. Well, we went to have fried chicken, but not heavily breaded fried chicken, rather very lightly fried. And that's the original. Theed fried chicken, rather very lightly fried. And that's the original. The original.

Starting point is 00:48:45 That's the OG fried chicken. The OG fried chicken. We also had some ugly potatoes as written on the menu. Ugly potatoes, they're basically tater tots. And you mentioned to me that the woman who's running the show that day, very smart, really had her operator hat on, very calm. Most likely, let's just say the daughter of the owner or somebody who would hand it down, but she may end up working there for the rest of her life or working career.

Starting point is 00:49:11 And that's a lot of the stuff that's invisible if you're only here for a brief time. This class struggle is, this is the theme of so many movies, books, TV series. It's the suffering and the struggle to move out of their condition and that society and the upper crust of society won't allow it. And this tension is in music, it's in movies, it's in literature, it's in TV shows, it's all around. And you might say, oh no, it's around every country. Sure, it is, but it's really strong and consistent in Korean movies and literature. Parasite is an example of that. You look at Bong Joon-ho's, all of his films, they're all very different. Some feel like a horror thriller. Some feel like a psycho thriller. Another one feels almost like comedic sci-fi fantasy, like The Host. If you see his original film, it's like a giant monster moving around Seoul and killing people.

Starting point is 00:50:13 But from a Western mindset, you're like, what is going on? This is almost silly. But it's actually, if you look at everything that's happening, it's talking about class struggle. This is part of what Korea has been since the very beginning of its own sort of political self-governance, post-Korean War, is the populism here. You saw that in the demonstrations. It's a demonstration activist society, and it's constantly battling with the fact that there are very large companies that own so much of the economy and your success to raise a family and to have a nice apartment and to put your kids in great schools and things like that all reside on whether or not you can get a job and keep it at these large companies yeah so they call them chaebols outside, but the employees of those chaebols will always call themselves conglomerates.

Starting point is 00:51:08 So you got to be careful, right? Yeah. I mean, this is, I'm sure they're different, but reminiscent of Japan with like Sony, Mitsubishi, etc. I think there's more control of the economy from the conglomerates in Korea. I'll just sort of try to parrot back things that I think you've said to me, and then you can fact check or expand, and then we'll eventually get to Han.

Starting point is 00:51:31 Yeah, we should do that. But a couple of things that struck me as super interesting. One is that these table, I guess the equivalent in Japanese would be keretsu, which is sort of like a chain of related companies, right? AKA conglomerate.

Starting point is 00:51:47 That here they are publicly traded, but they float a very small percentage of the shares. So they're kind of like the Mars company in the US in the sense that they're privately held. Well, not privately held, but they're- They're still family- Family-controlled, which is mind-blowing to think about, just given the size of these things. Secondly, that, and we didn't cover this yet, but the broadband penetration and the technological access here is such, in part, it seems like, because these large conglomerates will coordinate with the government to focus on, say, one or two things for five years, ten years, and they act in this concerted way, which would have to contribute to how Korea punches above its weight class, right? Because what's, I mean, I don't know the population of Korea, but it's not a huge place.

Starting point is 00:52:37 You know, it's under 50 million people. It's nuts. I mean, to think about what Korea has done on the global stage and continues to do and will do with that population. It's kind of, I mean, it is incredible. That's the, I don't want to say the underbelly or the dark side, but it is really the trade-off of having on one side, a very optimistic and progressive growth mindset for the economy and society, which is pound for pound, per capita, probably the most innovative high growth in terms of GDP country in the history of the planet in the last 50 years. I mean, it is a leader in wireless technology, is a leader in chip manufacturing,

Starting point is 00:53:18 it's a leader in heavy industrials, steel, and it's also now a leader in entertainment, media, fashion, beauty industry. So it's doing a lot. It's accomplishing a lot. Great. The other side of that is that there's still a class divide. There's not a lot of upper mobility. And that's changing for sure, but it's still very much. And you see this in the stories that are told. These stories are told and they're popular, not because they don't exist. It's because that people feel that. They empathize with that. They feel that in their bones

Starting point is 00:53:51 that this is their condition in their life. So the populism here is different than in the US. The political spectrum actually is different. There's not a left versus right in the way that we think about it in the US. Though the US is turning more into Korea style of politics. Well, we'll leave it at that because I don't like politics, but I am recognizing this,

Starting point is 00:54:11 which is that the populism here is about class struggle and about workers' rights and about having a little bit more of a flattening out so that people have opportunities to be upwardly mobile. The thing that you're seeing today in film, the thing that makes Parasite become a global phenomenon and win Oscars is that story. It's a great film.

Starting point is 00:54:36 Bong Joon-ho is a great storyteller and cinematographer, but it is the writing and the acting. You can take that story story as different as it is in it's a Korean family, two Korean families basically fighting with each other for the entirety of the film in quiet and sometimes loud ways but you empathize with both

Starting point is 00:54:58 and you're critical of both. There's not a good versus bad. There's no hero versus villain and you take that out into the US, you take that out into Europe, you take that out into any country. It resonates. It's universal.

Starting point is 00:55:12 Now it's universal and the writing is good and the cinematography is great. And what I did not realize is this K-Wave is not entirely an accident. It's not like people just threw a bunch of things at random times independently into the works and then Korea landed on the global stage with entertainment. There seems to be a lot more to it. And I would expect, though, that many people listening to this, there's not really though, a lot of people listening to this are probably, if they're like,

Starting point is 00:55:41 oh, Korea, they're listening to this because they saw Parasite. Or they're like, why is K-pop so big? What the hell happened in the last few years? What is going on? None of my friends speak Korean. Why are they listening? How can they listen to K-pop? What is going on? Why is Blackpink all over the place? Why is Blackpink at Coachella? Yeah, what the hell is going on? And then you have also these streaming shows on Netflix, right? Yeah. Squid Game. You've got the, I can't remember, I can never remember the name, these jacked men and women just- Physical 100. Physical 100, right? It's like American Gladiators, but Elimination Challenge with Koreans. It's amazing. So what is going on? When I watched this doc, I was like, oh, wait a minute.

Starting point is 00:56:24 Behind the scenes, there is a lot of very clever strategy. Look at Squid Game. Class struggle. Right. But in this intense, crazy, dystopian game. Makes Hungry Games look like a kid's show. It really does. I remember watching Hungry Games.

Starting point is 00:56:44 I hadn't seen it, actually, until very recently. And I was like, oh, this is kind of boring. Let me put it this way. If you were to take all of these stories and you were to look at them as, these are commercial activities where you want the audience to engage with it and to pay for tickets, right? Where does it come from?

Starting point is 00:57:04 Who is producing and paying for that? The money is coming, the capital is coming from the jevels, the conglomerates. The production companies behind K-pop, they're all publicly traded companies. The movie studios, the production companies, the labels, they're all huge businesses worth billions of dollars.

Starting point is 00:57:24 It's also been a lot of government support, right? Yeah. So originally in the 1980s, venture capital, which is the industry I'm in and you're familiar with too as an angel investor, in the US, venture capital is focused on technology. Maybe biotech, but mostly technology, software. Venture capital started out as a government-supported industry focused in not only on technology, but mainly on media, entertainment, movies. You're talking about in the US?

Starting point is 00:57:53 No, in Korea. I see. And so K-pop and Korean movies and all of this, it's not controlled by the government or supported by the government today directly and oftentimes the sensors are coming down on things and it's lightened up but you used to not see like you know people kissing in movies the korean sensors are pretty strong just like the japanese sensors yeah the japanese sensors are strong although anything goes in the comic books yeah yeah we're talking about national broadcast national broadcast is different but the the what you see as the K-wave today, a lot of it came originally from the Korean venture capital industry, which was supported by the government and funded largely by the government.

Starting point is 00:58:34 It was initially focused in on what we would call now today soft power. Now, look, there's a Korean semiconductor chip industry and a whole bunch of technology areas that are now excelling well. But that was not the main focus or the main success area for venture capital. So it's really interesting now. It's probably problematic for a lot of politicians to see a lot of this stuff, depending upon what side of the spectrum you're on, on the partisan side. But I think that that's what has resonated, is that it feels like the most irreverent and authentic and weird, sometimes crazy, but really raw and powerful movies out there and TV series. And it's very different from any other formulaic tropes that you see out there.

Starting point is 00:59:24 Sometimes Korean movies take twists and turns they'll start out like a rom-com and it turns into a zombie thriller parasite did that that ends up in like a political thriller mode and you're sort of confused like old boy is like the probably the most famous movie before Parasite. And no one leaves watching that movie saying it was bad. You say it was intense and it was incredible, but you also say I felt sick to my stomach. I think that's the value that Korean soft power starts to bring. So the movies are easier for me to wrap my head around

Starting point is 00:59:59 than, say, K-pop, right? Because there's good music all over the world, and there are entertainers and boy bands and girl bands in a lot of places. Most people outside of Korea do not speak Korean. Well, hey, sometimes I'm in Hawaii or I'm in LA in a Hispanic neighborhood, and I will see posters of BTS up on the walls.

Starting point is 01:00:22 And there's a whole learning of... BTS is a group yeah there's a whole group of younger people in the u.s in latin america in europe that are following their favorite band which is bts or black pink oh i get it i'm just wondering and learning korean language i'm wondering how that happened and is this like beanie babies okay it's gonna like burn twice as hot and flame out yeah or is there sort of more to the story i think it's here to stay and i think it's tied in with why anime japanese anime is also very globally popular which is it feels like a fantasy world that is an escape from their current world and that they can aspire to. So it's like you see in the hip hop community in the U S they love Naruto.

Starting point is 01:01:07 Yeah. I mean, their hats, their shirts. You think about how many hip hop groups would include things from like Chinese Kung Fu movies. And there's always been this Wu Tang clan. There's always been this crossover of culture from Asia on that level.

Starting point is 01:01:23 And it's been a little bit more like, let's take the caricature of it or the themes that level and it's been a little bit more like let's take the caricature of it or the themes of it and let's include it but now it's become part of like global pop culture the k-pop stuff is really interesting because they actually copied american pop boy bands and girl bands yeah backstreet boys but they just took it to the next level the way like japanese say we're gonna do french food or italian pizza and we're just gonna take it to the next level. The way like Japanese say, we're going to do French food or Italian pizza, and we're just going to take it to the next level. Take it to hyperdash.

Starting point is 01:01:48 Dial it in, right? We're going to take American automobile engineering culture, and we're going to use like a Kaizen approach and make more reliable cars faster. Crazy story on that. I think it was Edward Deming who had something like scientific manufacturing, scientific management.

Starting point is 01:02:02 This American efficiency social scientist who was basically ignored in the US was then embraced by Japan and led to like the Toyota way. And it's wild, but to your point, Japan and it seems like, as you're describing it, Korea, are really good at like taking something that's good

Starting point is 01:02:20 and being like, okay, we're going to sort of like spinal tap, right? Like when we really need a little extra, we're going to turn it to 11. That's a good way to put it yeah turn it to 11 so on that front the formula of the pop band was taken and it was turned into a boot camp where there were auditions and you would be trained and you would learn how to dance you would learn how to dance, you would learn how to sing, you would be assigned a role as if you were in a military outfit of some sort. And you're the rapper, you're the lead singer, you're more of a dancer. And so there's a whole formula and institutionalization that happened

Starting point is 01:03:01 around pop culture that Koreans really took on, right? I'm connecting something that I've never connected before. Tell me if this is totally off base, but you're talking about class struggle and lack of upward mobility. Okay. If you go to the US,

Starting point is 01:03:15 like how many people are aspiring to be in a boy or girl band? Not many. Furthermore, there isn't really, there's not much of a like a discovery mechanism or talent development program for that i mean sure you can go to la and there are people who put these bands together but in korea you've got these like dance training studios where people pay money and basically create their own like american idol vetting system. And then the scouts can pick from the cream of the crop.

Starting point is 01:03:47 If you take that, and it's like an industrialization of this very creative, artistic culture that we revere the authenticity of that in the US, like the unknown musician that rises up and you love that. You love that authentic story. korea that's not really a thing because k-pop it's pop yeah it's popular fashion now it doesn't mean it's not good it just means that they've been put through boot camp they have coaches for every single aspect of what they are supposed to be doing as this not on stage, in their normal life, too.

Starting point is 01:04:26 Yeah, everything is very controlled. Now, then you look at the film industry, I think it's quite different. Film industry is much more about a real look at a lot of things that are not pristine and polished in society. So you have K-pop, which feels utopian, sometimes a little plastic. And then you have these films that are talking about North and South Korea. You're talking about colonial history between Japan and Korea. And you're talking about class struggle internally in Korea. You're talking about the mental health issues. You talking about, all of these much darker and much more real and raw topics. And so it's odd that included in this picture of Korean soft power

Starting point is 01:05:11 is this very polished and industrialized pop culture and then this very intense and raw entertainment culture around movies. Yeah, you get the polar extremes. Just because I've teased it so much. What is Han? Just like Natsukashi is quite Japanese. Super Japanese. For Koreans, Han is probably the most talked about

Starting point is 01:05:37 recent collective trait of Koreans that Koreans talk about, but then now people outside are talking about. And what it essentially boils down to is this idea of this collective suffering that the Korean people have through history and manifests in this sort of, it's very complicated feeling of we are suffering and we share that pain with each other. It's not always a negative. It can sometimes drive us to express ourselves in strong ways.

Starting point is 01:06:14 It can drive us to suffer together collectively. So collectivism is a very Asian thing, and independence is something that we revere in the US. That collectivism in Korea is Han. It's Han. And is it generally, you mentioned suffering. There are a lot of different descriptions of this. I was doing a little bit of reading.

Starting point is 01:06:37 It's really hard to explain in English, actually. It seems very hard. Is it a type of, so sadness would be a component of that? Yeah. And also anger and angst. very hard. Is it a type of, so sadness would be a component of that? Yeah. And also anger and angst. I was talking to David Chang from Momofuku, he's an old friend, and he asked me about Travis Kalanick. He had never met him. And he said, you knew him. He seems like he has a lot of Han. And I said, yeah, he's intense. And it expresses in a drive to succeed. And obviously, we all know that story. But for Koreans, Han can be a drive to do great things, to bond together, to understand each other, to empathize. like you said, the anger and the K-rage that you're talking about, which channeled correctly

Starting point is 01:07:26 allows you to build an entire industry and succeed on a global level to create- What is it? Chips on the shoulder, make chips in the pocket? Pop culture phenomenons that win Grammys and that movies that win Oscars and light up the world to what's happening in this little country that used to be a poor developing country that was broken after colonization and a war where does that come from and so i think a lot of koreans romantically will describe it as like we have this han that drives us but it's not perfect it's not always positive it can just result in chaos and destruction too but it's this thing that feels very real and i think that's what you're seeing in like korean movies that's what you're

Starting point is 01:08:08 seeing in industries the positive energy that can come out of it not just the negative energy so it's very complicated yeah but jung and these are like very simple chinese characters and korean characters so i wonder what the i don't know the hanzha for any of these. So zheng is this connection or affection, this bond that you feel. And so a lot of people will say that they don't have zheng with someone or that a person does not have zheng. This is a much more bonding, affectionate thing. And it's a very simple word, but it means a lot. Zheng is also a complicated thing, too.

Starting point is 01:08:47 It's hard to describe without using a lot of words and adjectives and feelings and emotions in English. But when you say that in Korean, it's very simple. Jung. It means a thing that isn't translatable. And then if I were to take two words that would describe Korean people, and again, I'm not Korean. I'm Korean American. i'm korean-american i'm kyo-po so i'm somewhat inside but somewhat outside and so i can compare it to how we are in america or other countries and han and jung would pretty much cover what what is nunchi so nunchi i mean you know bobby kim Bobby Hunter. Yes.

Starting point is 01:09:26 You had him on the show. I did. A friend of mine as well. Great conversation. He really got it right, which is it's reading the room, but nunchi is like, nun is your eyes. And it's the ability to see what's really going on, reading between the lines or reading the room.

Starting point is 01:09:44 And this is really important. is not a like happy positive thing this is again a defensive inquisitive analytical skill right discerning eye yeah it's very critical yeah critical yeah there are things that come up when you talk about people and you talk about your connection with them. And so if I come in and kind of bluntly or obtusely am rude in a group, I walk into a dinner or a room, I change the topic really obtrusively. I'm like, ah, he just didn't read the room. He just kind of came in like a bull in a china shop. Yeah, there isn't.

Starting point is 01:10:28 And then with Han, that's something that I actually have not heard a lot of Koreans talk about it. I feel like a lot of Korean Americans in Gyopo talk about it. So it's an interesting thing. I think it's a more recent modern yeah definition and term i don't think it's like an old classic phrase or term so my sense is anecdotally that it's something that's been a little bit created guys now yeah and then also with jung that's something that my parents talk about a lot yeah so and my parents don't talk about Han. It's like, maybe the people that really feel it don't want to talk about it. Yeah, totally.

Starting point is 01:11:08 And the people that want to find some reason or some rhyme to why they feel a certain way or something is happening to them, they'll create a concept. But I think it is very interesting to look at those two concepts, Han and Jung, and then that'll help you understand a lot in Korean society. It helps me a lot, actually. Yeah. I'll give you one example.

Starting point is 01:11:31 If you're a visitor to Korea, there's a host mentality. In Japanese, it's called omotenashi. In Korean, there's a concept of you're my sonnim, my guest. And it's very strong, very similar to Japanese omotenashi, right? They want to exceed in treating you well.

Starting point is 01:11:51 They want to give you food. They want to take care of you. They want to do that. They want to create this concept of jeong, not to create the concept, but to have jeong with you. And that would be the ideal because Koreans, most Koreans, not all maybe, but Koreans

Starting point is 01:12:07 want to have that connection, that deep connection. They want to drink with you. They want to stay out late with you. They want to wrestle with you. They want to argue with you. They want to put their arms around your shoulder and sing a song after downing some soju, right? They want to feel that real visceral connection with you and people often i don't really enjoy it but people often in business even in technology which is somewhat of a more cerebral industry they want to go out late and have drinks until five six in the morning and in the u.s we're like hey this is just way too much like this is bedtime they want to do that to know that they have a bond with you.

Starting point is 01:12:48 They want to create that somewhat like abruptly. Right. But you see that. Yeah. I'm trying to find the character for Jung. It's really bothering me that I, Oh, wait, wait.

Starting point is 01:12:59 Okay. Jung is, Jung is good. Jung is positive. Jung is optimistic. Yeah. positive. Jung is optimistic. Yeah, warm feeling of attachment. Han, not so much. Yeah, Jung, you see that character, the Chinese character,

Starting point is 01:13:17 I'm pretty sure in concepts like sympathy, those types of sort of feeling, emotive concepts. Empathy, sympathy, affection, bonds. In every movie, in every TV series, they're moving in and out of Han and Jung in the narrative, in the storytelling. And that's, I think, if you were to whittle it down, if you had to really simplify and reduce it to something very at root level, I think it would be that Koreans are moving between Jung and Han in their storytelling, in their life, their business. where it's all happy and positive, then maybe after a critical moment or an emotional thing,

Starting point is 01:14:07 or maybe if you guys were drinking beers at night as teenagers, where it flipped. Yeah, usually I could tell if the eyes got really big, I'd be like, oh boy, here we go. Red. Yeah, red face, big eyes. I'm like, oh, oh, oh, oh. I think we're getting into Hulk smash.

Starting point is 01:14:26 There's energy. Energy frequency has changed. But yeah, so that, I mean, I wanted to, yeah, that's what I would think about when I think about how to whittle it down to something basic. Before coming to Korea, I was trying to do a bit of reading. I didn't want to do too much reading. People have asked me a lot, what did you expect? I'm like, I didn't expect anything. I tried to come in as blank as possible. But I did a little bit of reading. I didn't want to do too much reading. People have asked me a lot, what did you expect? And I'm like, I didn't expect anything. I tried to come in as blank as possible, but I did a little bit of reading. I didn't want to come in completely ignorant.

Starting point is 01:14:52 And it seems like the government has either earmarked or committed, maybe already spent, who knows, something like $200 billion. Maybe those are tax incentives, I have no idea, but $200 billion US for increasing birth rate. So what is the, I guess, status of birth rate in Korea, in this case, South Korea, and why is it so low? How would you explain that? So first off, developed countries around the world have a relatively low birth rate, reproductive rate. Germany, Japan, even right now China is having that problem.

Starting point is 01:15:34 So there's that. But what I think is happening in Korea is that this class divide, the economic condition in Korea is that the haves have a lot and the have-nots, it's hard for them to move up. It is very expensive. It is a high cost of living in Seoul. Maybe not in the countryside, but everyone wants to live in the city.

Starting point is 01:15:55 To get an apartment, you know, in the U.S. you put down maybe a month, two months, maybe three months of deposit, and then you can get a pretty nice apartment if you have a job in korea you have to put down a year or two of your rent oh my god as a deposit and what you get is maybe a one-bedroom apartment and one of the these large concrete high-rises that you see just stacked around seoul and so to start a family is quite expensive. So there's that. Cost of living to start a family. I don't know if you have an answer to this, but why so much deposit? Why a year or two of deposit?

Starting point is 01:16:35 The consumer credit culture is not in good shape. It's never been in good shape in Korea. As long as I've been aware of it. I'm laughing because we had to take a pause earlier because I got a phone call from the hotel. It was like, you've exceeded your incidentals. Can you come down and make your deposit?

Starting point is 01:16:51 I'm like, you have my credit card. They don't trust you. The way this works is I charge stuff, and then I pay at the end. And they're like, no, you have to come down and put down a further deposit. I'm like, okay. All right, fine. So I guess I answered my own question. you have to come down and put down a further deposit i'm like okay all right fine so so i guess i answered my own question financial crisis 1997 98 because of thailand and japan went down korea went down right and this is a good example actually of han and jung together yeah i'm trying

Starting point is 01:17:22 to make connect dots here yeah right to simplify the audience but there was a austerity program korean government went out through media and said we need every citizen of the country to take their personal jewelry and contribute it to the national cause to the IMF austerity program that was laid upon them to get bailed out, essentially. And people donated their jewelry. They melted it down for the sake of the greater good, the common collective good. It's so wild just to think about how poorly that would go down in the U.S. Would not go down at all. No, of course not.

Starting point is 01:18:03 Like, we can't even do that with guns, right? There's no sense of gun control. Imagine now, take all of your valuables from jewelry and contribute and melt it down. But the other side of that is that there is a speculative gambling culture in investments, in real

Starting point is 01:18:19 estate, in stocks, bonds, real estate that was so bad in Korea that people were taking out credit cards at like 30% interest rates and buying consumer goods. It's still happening today. The Korean consumer luxury market is the per capita highest market on the planet. Really? That's why you see all of these

Starting point is 01:18:46 european luxury brands every single mall they have huge stores luxury brands have been focused in on marketing to koreans for now 5-10 years there's this consumer goods culture here and this consumerism materialismism, that is problematic. Because a lot of it is on borrowed money. And so in the 90s, they had this problem, the subprime credit market for consumers. They even stopped derivatives trading in Korea because of it. Because people were getting so upside down on their investment speculation. There is a speculative, almost gambling problem in investments. It got to the point where

Starting point is 01:19:32 the left-wing government that was in power in the last administration, during COVID, a lot of wealthy people were buying properties and they limited people from buying more than one second property so that you can buy a third can you imagine that in the u.s again something that would never happen in the u.s so there is this sense of like you know one there's a class divide and it's very expensive it's a high cost of living to start a family and it's also very hard to move up that. So why even go there? My other theory on this is that not only is it expensive, but social values are changing. Women have largely been unable to enter in the professional workplace, but that is changing. And that's a good thing. They can go work at a company and rise up and become an executive.

Starting point is 01:20:26 So careers are now not just service employee careers, but actual executive careers, company careers, corporate careers in these conglomerates are now possible. And so as that shifts to be more balanced and fair, There's less young couples getting married early and having babies. So I think there's two things there that I would say. And I see that among extended family members, friends. It is a very expensive proposition because you want them in the best schools. You're going to put them in the baseball hug one.

Starting point is 01:21:02 You're going to put them in the swimming hug one, the math hagwon the piano lessons like all of that from 3 p.m all the way to 9 p.m yeah so you are spending a lot of money per year for each child because you want them to have the very best and in korea the competitiveness around this is incredible. If you're not putting them in the hug one, who are you as a parent? And that's incredible pressure.

Starting point is 01:21:31 And that's incredible, like, exorbitant cost for someone who is not upwardly mobile, does not have an opportunity to have stock in a company and have it exit like we love in Silicon Valley. We put out stock options and equity as, is like the carrot of entrepreneurship and risk. They don't have that here. And it's changing. There are more and more startups.

Starting point is 01:21:52 There are unicorns that are coming out of Korea. Coupang, TOS. There's a lot of consumer marketplaces and fintech companies. It's becoming sort of a Silicon Valley of Korea. And it's exceeding the speed in japan it's not quite what china is china's very very advanced and forward there but korea is finally having a startup culture where risk is appreciated and admired and rewarded in some cases but outside of that it is very expensive and is difficult. And a lot of young couples may not want to get married right away.

Starting point is 01:22:28 They may want to make their way in their career. So I think it is a problem. I mean, we all know the economics around population decline. That hurts GDP. It correlates. It's causal too, but at least it correlates. We can agree on that. So I think it is a real problem.

Starting point is 01:22:43 I don't know how it's solved. Not that I've thought a lot about it or someone's asked me to solve it. Can you imagine a small country like this shrinking? And what that does, again, to all these things. And a lot of people want to move out. They want to go. So my family and everyone else's family, everyone who moved to the US, I would say 99% of them moved for a better life, to go to America and to be able to live a better life and provide just a higher quality education and lifestyle for their families. Because it was hard in Korea in the 60s, 70s, even 80s. So if people are moving out to find that upward mobility to do better for their families, and then here you're somewhat still confined, that's a tough thing.

Starting point is 01:23:32 And there's one last thing that is really challenging about Korea. There's a civil service examination that you take to get into... That score really decides whether or not you get into a top university i see that's the equivalent of an entrance exam but it's more than that it's like you could not do on the sct but you have a good gpa yeah you interview well then you have all these tiers of junior college four-year college ivy league state schools you have a lot of options liberal arts colleges whatever whatever you're looking for. Here, you're either in a top college or you're not.

Starting point is 01:24:10 And if you do not go to college, it is highly unlikely that you will have the ability to provide for a family, a large family, well and in a healthy way. You're definitely not going to all these hug ones and things like that. So you're right in saying to all these hug ones and things like that so you're right in saying that k-pop and k-pop is like us is like pro sports you know that's the way that's the side route out and i think k-pop and movies and entertainment and gaming esports is huge here

Starting point is 01:24:41 you saw as they were setting up League of Legends stages downstairs yeah enormous I mean there it's just it's like an entire playing field full of people down there

Starting point is 01:24:53 engaging with League of Legends and those PC bungs right who are they playing there was a guy walking around with a huge sword shirtless

Starting point is 01:24:59 and it was snowing that is dedication let's switch gears to a little bit more about like what's happening in soft power let's do it what was your take on all of this entertainment media the beauty industry this k-wave what was your opinion of it before coming here i've been paying very close attention to it for the last few years because I'm always curious to distinguish between trends and fads. I brought up Beanie Babies, not to throw Beanie Babies under the bus,

Starting point is 01:25:34 but there are certain things that become fashionable because maybe a handful of celebrities are using X fill in the blank, like Ugg boots has been, had many lives. It's like a Phoenix or I can certainly list many, many different things.

Starting point is 01:25:52 But how do you distinguish between that and not to get too financey, but like a secular tailwind with some type of trend that is inevitable, right? Like penetration of broadband and smartphones. And also trying to identify the flywheels at play or the elements that contribute to momentum. So for instance, if you look at podcasting, and for a lot of people who have not had the engagement that I've had for 10 plus years now, or no, it's not 10 plus years, but as a listener, 10 plus years, but as a producer, as a producer of a podcast, it's going to be 10 years next April. It seems like podcasts went from

Starting point is 01:26:37 kind of nothing to everywhere is the perception for someone who's only engaging with it now, but they heard about podcasts. They're like, wow, how did it become that everyone is now on a podcast with a podcast talking about podcasts? Seems like five years ago, there was nothing. Well, there was something five years ago, just like there was K-pop five years ago. But it suddenly seems like there's surround sound stereo where it's on magazine covers and it's online everywhere and there's news and your friends are talking about it and there are documentaries. And sometimes that comes together as an emergent property of a bunch of unrelated events, but sometimes there's orchestration and architecture behind it. Or there's an example of a standout success. So for instance, in the case of podcasting,

Starting point is 01:27:20 Serial was that. Serial became a phenomenon. It was the show that everybody had to listen to. And it gripped maybe not the entire nation, but kind of the New York literati crowd. And since the New York literati run the mastheads of these huge media outlets, it gave the impression of Serial being huge, which it was. It was huge, yeah. And people were like, podcast? How do I even listen to a podcast? It introduced people to the medium.

Starting point is 01:27:50 Exactly. It introduced people to the medium. It introduced them to platforms. And looking at this explosion of Korean media, I'm like, okay, where did this start? What set the snowball in motion? And I haven't figured it out. I have not. Although certainly Parasite was a huge,

Starting point is 01:28:09 that was huge, but I'm like, that can't be, I feel like that's the result of some preceding things that I have missed. Yes. Right. But I just haven't known how to dissect it. So I'm like,

Starting point is 01:28:19 okay, well, let me keep an eye on things. And then I see Squid Game. Okay. So Squid Game, Squid Games, Squid Games. I always mess up if it's singular or plural, but anyway, well let me keep an eye on things and then i see squid game okay so squid game squid game squid games like i always mess up if it's singular or plural but anyway you see that explode i'm like

Starting point is 01:28:30 okay that's interesting based on that success i would imagine netflix because this seems to be what netflix does to be like let us double down on whatever this is. Algorithmically, what makes this show this show, a big part of it is Korea. It changed Netflix. Yeah. Their whole international strategy was a good strategy. It was very unique to them. No one else was doing Hulu, Disney. They're not focused on international.

Starting point is 01:29:00 Netflix was the only one. When they launched in Korea and Japan, it was like, great. It'll bring up subscriber numbers. Yeah. But then when it hit in Korea, they increased the budgets many times over because they saw that it was not only the Korean market that loved this programming, but it was the global markets. It was the content, the films films and the tv shows coming out of the market and that they could distribute all across the planet i almost look at the netflix

Starting point is 01:29:31 they were sort of carrying the pollen of korean culture this pop culture this media culture entertainment and they accelerated it to a level where it probably felt like a sudden overnight thing. But you're absolutely right. It's not only emergent, but it was emergent over the course of several decades. Right. And so it was emergent over the course of several decades. And then there are these accelerants. COVID almost certainly was an accelerant.

Starting point is 01:29:58 You have people at home watching Netflix, looking for something to bond over. And boom, around the same time, you've got a bunch of this Korean stuff coming in that's very high quality, really compelling. And it's new. Also, people are like, what? What is this? Right? Like, Americans reading subtitles?

Starting point is 01:30:19 And even though I've never really been involved with film, a little bit with television, I'm very interested to see which dominoes tip over a lot of other dominoes, right? And how the macroeconomic stuff factors into it and geopolitics, but also main protagonists in the U.S. where almost, I'm not going to say without exception, but if you look at a lot of the blockbusters, whether it's the Mission Impossible movies or Marvel movies, it's like they always want to have a Chinese, at least one Chinese main character. Why? Because it is very important that you get the chinese market super important financially right and it almost feels like just jammed in there though oh it's totally jammed in there it's like what okay victorian like a biopic and there's a chinese guy it's totally just like shoehorned in a lot of the time yeah But part of the reason I paid so much attention to Korea is that Korea is small, right? So it's like an export game. The US is not looking for like total addressable market in Korea. It's the opposite, which is a lot

Starting point is 01:31:36 harder to pull off as a smaller player. And I've been tracking it. I've also been impressed, very impressed, and this does not get, I don't think this gets enough airtime, so hopefully this podcast will make people explore a bit. Like, Korean design and aesthetic is super sharp, and the best book design, I want to be fair, there are a couple of really good ones in terms of publishers who have published my books in foreign languages.

Starting point is 01:32:09 The Korean publisher, maybe publishers for my books, have done an exceptional job with book design. And as you know, and as we've been discussing, education, important, right? Literacy, very high. Voracious readers in korea also true with germany it's disproportionately the case where like you look at how my books have performed in germany and it outperforms the uk plus australia plus like almost everywhere outside of the u.s because the culture itself values education and reading but to your question about korea like k-pop i mean pop music in general especially boy bands girl bands is not really my jam but as a study it's

Starting point is 01:32:51 interesting for me because i feel like it could be anything i read a book on ryan air ages ago because i was like okay how did ryan air suddenly seemingly become ubiquitous how did this happen because if i can study that and I can study what's happening with K-pop and then Korean entertainment, maybe there's something I can learn that will allow me to, as an investor, predict this earlier, where you

Starting point is 01:33:16 have converging trends that are coming. For instance, Shopify, we were talking about Shopify earlier today. As far as I know, the first advisor to Shopify when they had 10 employees, if you just looked at tech trends, if you were able to bet on the right team in e-commerce and setting up that kind of backend plumbing for websites to be able to sell things, be interrupted outside of like nuclear holocaust so let's find the right team and that maybe in retrospect seems obvious but so do a lot of great companies but if you can kind of see where things are converging uber right in our case would be another example of that where it's like okay let's not look at and this parallels to korea where it's like, okay, let's not look at, and this parallels to Korea,

Starting point is 01:34:06 where it's like in the beginning, and you remember this, I mean, how many hundreds of people said no to Uber, right? Uber ended up on like AngelList early days and people were like, what? This is ridiculous. This is for black cars for the one percenters in San Francisco's boo, lame, tech bro, blah, blah, blah. And a lot of the professional investors who said no,

Starting point is 01:34:24 said no because they were like, well, let's And a lot of the professional investors who said no, said no because they were like, well, let's look at the total addressable market for people who are going to use black cars. Look at what percentage Uber can manage to secure. And it's like, no, it's not the right way to look at it. It would be like looking at Parasite and these various TV shows and being like, all right, well, what's the population of Korea? Oh, it's declining. Well, what percentage of Koreans can you get to watch this. And then secondly, because I write, because I have podcasts coming up on my 10th anniversary, and I'm using that as an opportunity to think about what's next for me. And generally, after five to 10 years of doing something, it gets really crowded. If I pick it correctly, the game gets harder. Oftentimes, I end up enjoying it less, even though I'm still enjoying the podcast.

Starting point is 01:35:28 And I'm like, all right, what's next for me? In which case, maybe there are techniques, maybe there are things I can look for, levers I can pull that would allow me to also build momentum on a micro level that I've seen at the macro level say with this korean entertainment stuff so yeah i've been paying a lot of attention but i'll be honest i don't know how to pay proper attention because i don't think the way to pay proper attention is to read the mainstream u.s media coverage of the k wave i don't think that's the right way to do it no absolutely not right i'll give a shout out to some books that have been very helpful. There's a great outfit. It's a publishing company called Talk to Me in Korean. I've got Talk to Me in Korean Level 1. I've got Real Life Korean Conversations

Starting point is 01:36:14 for Beginners. I'm hoping to improve my Korean enough that eventually at some point I could actually do some Korean language reading on this stuff or listening. I will say, in the week that we've been here, I was really honestly surprised at not only your ability to read Korean, Hangul, wherever we went, but to also deliver it and enunciate it in the right way. And so I was kind of surprised. I mean, we've been friends for a long time, and I've seen you speak Japanese and Mandarin. But I was really surprised because I knew you've never been here and never studied any Korean language.

Starting point is 01:36:52 And I remember I asked you, I said, how long have you been studying? And you're like, two days. So even as a longtime friend, I was very surprised. So that's a skill that is not only about finding a great method or applying yourself, but the fact that you would insist to order by yourself and you would have a conversation with someone. There's a part of throwing yourself into the mix to be able to do that. So question back to you on that, because I admire that.

Starting point is 01:37:20 That's amazing. Thank you. I've had to do that in beijing and shanghai with mandarin because i look asian i can pass a little bit more when i'm speaking you know i'm like you know i say right and so and i'll get a little bit of a pass right but you know you're a white guy yeah and you're coming in here confident yeah so i know that you've learned a lot of asian languages and you're fluent in two tell me about what you are doing when you are learning like how do you think about the material and how do you think about your method on both those because i

Starting point is 01:37:58 think that's really interesting i've never seen someone do this with a Korean this fast. And I've had a lot of people try. So I want to give a heartfelt high five and thank you to the Korean people first, because I will say part of the reason I've been so excited to do it, and then I'll get into the method and what I'm doing, is people here are so supportive of it. And they're surprised. And the positive feedback is great. Which is not like France. it's not like france i mean there's some great people in france but they're less supportive

Starting point is 01:38:30 in japan they're very supportive right like if you can introduce yourself like oh you know but i wasn't sure what to expect here and it gives me the impression and i don't know if this is accurate but gives me the impression that a lot of foreigners just don't try here because people are like, oh, if I order sparkling water in Korean, they're just like, oh, wow. So the approach that I've taken, and part of the challenge in learning any language is you don't know which textbooks or sources are going to be good. Now, there are tools, and full disclosure, I invested in them very in their series A, but like Duolingo has become this incredible resource worldwide. So I did use some Duolingo. I then supplemented that. I wanted to look at methods that I had applied to previous languages. And there are a few methods that off thethe-shelf other people can use, and then I have my own

Starting point is 01:39:25 kind of eclectic freestyle approach that I use with most languages. There is a method called the Michel Thomas method, M-I-C-H-E-L Thomas method. And Michel Thomas, way back in the day, I think he taught languages to Barbra Streisand and all these celebrities. He was, if I'm remembering correctly, he was either born in Switzerland or Germany. He was in the military. I believe he was Jewish, taught himself a million different languages. And I think he was in intelligence for a good period of time. And what I like about his method is that it is for most people the opposite of what they experienced in school. That is very unpleasant for most people who opposite of what they experienced in school that is very unpleasant for most people

Starting point is 01:40:07 who are subjected to it. Most people who study languages in school, they're like, first of all, I'm never going to use what they're teaching me. Second of all, they're trying to get me to read tables of conjugations. It's so foreign, not just in the language, but just in the format that A, it's unpleasant. B, people don't retain anything. A lot of people who are, say, American listening to this will have in school been required to study multiple years of Spanish. And nonetheless, they basically don't speak Spanish, right? They can ask where the bathroom is or say, good day. That's about it. Michelle Thomas asks you to take no notes whatsoever. It is purely auditory.

Starting point is 01:40:46 Interesting. And you listen to the method. No reading. No reading. Zero reading. There are some shortcomings associated with that, which is why I've added other things. But with the Michelle Thomas, I read this cartoon, which is How to Learn to Read Korean in 15 Min minutes, which is really well done. And I'll put this in the show notes. Then I watched a couple of YouTube videos on how to read Korean. And just to get the reading up to speed again, in this particular case, it's not true for Chinese. It's certainly going to be harder for something like Arabic.

Starting point is 01:41:26 Greek, you can do it pretty easily. Cyrillic, so Russian, you could also learn to read and sound out in about an hour. Once you have that, your goal is to get to the point where you can absorb things ambiently by walking around and seeing menus and so on, on a trip like this. But with the Michelle Thomas method, it's similar to what some people will be familiar with as the Pimsleur method, where it introduces vocabulary, and then it basically functions almost like Anki. There's an app called Anki, which means rote memorization in Japanese, funny enough. Or I think it was SuperMemo way back in the day, which had some type of, I want to say it was like an algorithmically driven spaced repetition system. So when you're just about to forget a word, it prompts you to recall it. And it's very effective

Starting point is 01:42:12 at helping you to retain this material because it'll introduce something like to study. And then they won't use it for like 30 minutes. And then it'll be like, I am going to study Korean today. And so you're using it in a different way, but the same. You're using it in a different context, but it's taking the same word that you're just about to forget. Yeah. And then it pops it back up to the top in your short-term memory. And so you would say, 오늘 한국말을 공부해요. And then later on, it'll be like,

Starting point is 01:42:47 you already learned how to say, I studied Korean today. How would you say, I studied Korean yesterday? But, 하지만, I'm going to work today. 일까요? And then it'll be like, all right, you learned how to say, and I was very impressed with the way they did it.

Starting point is 01:43:03 Michelle Thomas was like the Michael Jordan of language teaching. So I listened to his original recordings before he died for Spanish, German, Italian, and he was cantankerous as fuck, which I loved. He would get all pissed off at the students because the format is somebody is teaching to other students, and they're live. The other students are screwing up. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong. And you're the third student, so you have to try to answer. You answer before the other students, and then the other students answer. And I listened to the Michelle Thomas original recordings, and I was very skeptical that they could take his method and have another teacher use it with students.

Starting point is 01:43:47 But the way they did it in this Korean is they had an American guy who lived in Korea, speaks Korean, and then they had a native speaker. And it was a combination. And I thought they did a very nice job. The one critique I would have is that in the original recordings, Michelle Thomas would say something like,

Starting point is 01:44:01 how do you say, I want to eat? Quiero comer in Spanish, right? And then it'd go boop, and there'd be a beep. And that meant you're supposed to reply. There was a space. And then it would go back to the recording and the other two students would answer. With the Korean, you have to hit pause a million times. Because if you just hear the other students repeat, you're training your recognition, but not your production. So I was using the Michelle Thomas method, and I only got through four or five of those before you arrived. And I knew I was going to be doing less sit down studying. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

Starting point is 01:44:35 you really haven't had any time. So you're actually giving samples of correct grammar Korean right now. I'm still impressed because you haven't really had much time to do this. No, I haven't had much time, but I will say also what I've tried very hard to do, and this is a question I get a lot from folks. There are many people who are better at learning languages than I am, but because it's not my full-time thing,

Starting point is 01:44:57 like there's some people who are online and their brand is language learning. It's like, okay, well, you better be better than I am. And you have the space to do that because it's your job. And that's not a swipe. There are some amazing people out there who speak 10 plus languages and did it as adults. It's mind-blowing. The only way that I can maintain my other languages is if I tie them to the next language that i learned so for instance i used spanish to then

Starting point is 01:45:27 learn german by using one piece the comic book one piece has a gazillion volumes so you can read it in japanese and then when i learned spanish i had the same volumes in japanese and spanish so i try to read them in spanish the benefit being it's almost all dialogue if i couldn't figure it out before i went to the dictionary i'd go back to the japanese version the benefit being it's almost all dialogue. If I couldn't figure it out before I went to the dictionary, I'd go back to the Japanese version, panel for panel, it's the same thing. I'm like, oh, okay, okay. And then I'm tying the Japanese to the Spanish. And then when I learned German a couple months later, which I've totally forgotten, unfortunately, German's gone. So sorry about that, guys. It's totally a light, but I've forgotten it all. Then I used the Spanish One Piece to learn the German One Piece. This is a Japanese manga comic book that is legendary.

Starting point is 01:46:12 It's the highest grossing franchise out of Japan as far as manga go, above Dragon Ball Z and all of those. And with the Korean, I knew reading was the key unlock. Reading was number one. The second piece was that I had to tie it to something else I already knew. And I did that with Japanese and Korean. Yeah, a lot of strong similarities. Strong similarities.

Starting point is 01:46:34 So for instance- Even though they wouldn't admit it. No, exactly. This is where I have to be so careful because now I'm coming here and I can know the history, but I'm like, shit, I don't want to piss people off.

Starting point is 01:46:43 You know what's really interesting is a lot of Koreans speak Japanese. Yeah, yeah. Very well. Yeah, you have a lot of tarot card reading places here, which I did not expect at all. And a lot of them say that they can also do the readings in Japanese. I've seen a number of signs. That's probably because there are a lot of Japanese tourists.

Starting point is 01:47:03 Oh, for sure. A lot of Japanese women love coming for tour-guided trips in Korea, going to the locations in the storyline of Korean dramas and movies. Korean dramas. It's like the Americans who go to Dubrovnik or wherever to see the Game of Thrones places. No, it's a whole travel tourist sector. Wow. And it's not just Japanese. It's other Asian groups and Europeans.

Starting point is 01:47:32 Actually, here's a funny, interesting fact. Someone from Naver, which is one of the big public internet companies here, kind of like Yahoo or Google. Side note, if you think you're going to use Google Maps here, you're not. You're going to have to download Naver Maps. You're going to have to download Naver Maps. You're going to have to download Naver Kakao Maps, yeah. So the super app thing is real here, by the way. What Elon wants to do with Twitter has only been done really in Asia and maybe Latin America, right?

Starting point is 01:47:54 You're talking like a WeChat type of thing where you can do everything in one app, yeah. So someone from Naver told me in a meeting that K-pop is so big and all the different like the digital artwork and media and content and all the things that you can buy and consume around that type of artist i think about all the merch digital merch said france is actually a larger market than the domestic market wow by dollars and i said are you sure do you mean by some other metric some other thing i said no by by gross dollars we do better with all of the licensed partnered content around k-pop bands and artists in france than we do in korea so that might be just their business around K-pop, digital content.

Starting point is 01:48:46 But it is interesting that Korea is almost wholly across the board, to your point about Netflix, to your point about what to learn. It is an export society. It is an export economy. They are shipping things like steel. They are shipping things like chips, wireless smartphones. They're now starting to ship a software in marketplaces. They're moving out,

Starting point is 01:49:13 and they are also in that other side of soft power. They're exporting movies, books, TV series, music, fashion, beauty. Korean beauty products are growing like wildfire, not only in the US, where that's understandable because you have a diaspora Korean American group and Asian American, but Europe, where French and Swiss beauty, that's the stronghold of the Eurocentric beauty, concepts of beauty, Korean products are becoming luxury products there, next to the LVMH and the caring group products, right? So I think if there's anything to learn from that export mindset, I mean, you mentioned about how you felt like the book publishing and the design, there's bakeries that are, and this is really following suit of what Japan did over the last 40 or 50 years. It was a contract manufacturing economy

Starting point is 01:50:15 that became an original OEM design economy. They leveraged what they had learned and they did better. Like the story of Japanese whiskey is incredible, right? They sent one guy to go learn from the masters in Scotland and he came back and started Suntory, right? It's wild. And I think a lot of that was learned by Koreans and they started learning that in heavy industry.

Starting point is 01:50:43 The main street in Gangnam is called Taeheran-no. Okay, so just as a quick footnote for people, so if you remember the, that's another breakthrough moment, kind of like cereal, Gangnam style. That music video passed a billion views and people were like, what the hell is going on? Gangnam style.

Starting point is 01:50:59 Total breakthrough moment for Korean culture. Yeah, so Gangnam is a neighborhood. Yeah, Gangnam is a neighborhood yeah gangnam is the most modern district in seoul it's the newest modern area of office buildings we went there the other day a lot of led walls and fancy stores things like that it's the new seoul korea has shifted from an economy of contract manufacturing. Samsung was a contract manufacturer for Japanese companies, electronics companies, as well as having all these other businesses in the larger conglomerate.

Starting point is 01:51:35 But in the beginning, a lot of this was shipping, import, export, heavy industry, things like that. And then there were contract manufacturers for Sony. Sony was originally a contract manufacturer for American consumer electronics companies. So there was a transition. But there was a moment in Korean history where the export of labor, this skilled industrial labor,

Starting point is 01:51:59 was what helped bring revenue and country alliances to Korea, which was a very poor country at the time. So the main road in Gangnam is called Teheran-no. And the reason why it's called Teheran-no is that Iran, when it was a capitalist, liberal country in the 70s and the 60s too, hired a lot of korean workforce so did saudi arabia and other countries to come be the skilled labor huh in other countries like koreans were the miners in germany

Starting point is 01:52:37 they got exported there to be the miners because no one in domestically wanted to be a minor because you had a high likelihood of death emphysema so the reason why it's called teherano is that it's in tribute to their friends in iran who gave them all this economic uplift through labor and revenue and they named it after tehran wow and so that's why it's called teherano. And if you look at the history of Korea, it was we will export our men and our women as nurses and our men as hard labor in these industrial roles. And then it was shipping, then it was steel, and then they moved up the pyramid

Starting point is 01:53:19 in terms of becoming a service economy into a manufacturing economy and then to a knowledge a service economy into a manufacturing economy, and then to a knowledge worker service economy, right? And they started creating original chip designs, working on broadband, and being the leaders in broadband, both wireless and fiber broadband. I was speaking with one of the leading wireless telcos here, and they're not like AT&T and Verizon back home. They are like the big tech companies that have software.

Starting point is 01:53:49 And he was telling me that Singtel and other regional wireless companies, mobile carriers in Asia, often come to them to ask them about the newest technology, how they should approach their own strategies around this, around LTE, 5G, and now around AI. And so wireless telecom companies here are building their own language models. Yeah, that's wild. Which you never expect AT&T and Verizon to go compete with open AI. Yeah. And so there is this accelerated sense of we must achieve something tomorrow because we're already behind. And that is a very Korean mentality. What we were talking about with Han and Jang, I'm going to try to bring this all together in a theory, in a grand theory. But this grand theory is also that tomorrow is not guaranteed for South Koreans. There's a well-understood tension with North Korea that at any moment, this could all be over. I don't truly understand it because I'm an American.

Starting point is 01:54:50 I live in California. But my parents, the older generation, they feel it. They talk about it. They obsess over it. If you look at newscasts, you look at books, you look at YouTube, this is like the hot topic. What to do about this? How do we reunify or do we not? And I think because tomorrow is not guaranteed,

Starting point is 01:55:12 they're living in the moment to do exactly what they want as fast as possible with an impatience that expresses itself as so industrious, so productive. Look at them cranking out, such a small country, cranking out films that are winning a Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d'Or there, Oscars here, you know, largest and most successful artists, music artists in the world, most, you know, high growth cosmetic beauty brands, largest mobile smartphone manufacturer other than Apple. Why is this coming from the small country? My opinion on this, and

Starting point is 01:55:45 people can disagree and many, many would, is that they are designed in their mindset and raised with if you don't do it now, you may never have a chance to do it again later. And so they are living in the moment knowing that 17 miles away are millions of soldiers and artillery and missiles pointed at them i'm glad you brought up the 17 miles away because in most people's mind at least i shouldn't say most what a ridiculous statement in my mind and in the minds of certainly many of my friends seoul has this huge cosmopolitan city exists it is far away from north Korea. No, it is not. It is not far away. It is right there. It's very close.

Starting point is 01:56:29 I'll frame it in terms that people can understand. It is closer than San Francisco is to San Jose. That's 28 miles. Yeah. Substantially closer. And so this living in the moment or achieving for just tomorrow, this impatience, that to me is this Han that's looming in the background of everyone's mind.

Starting point is 01:56:53 And this is angst about upward mobility and being able to achieve that pushes Koreans out in the diaspora to become Gyo Po because they can't do it here because the system won't allow it. It's kinetic and it's sometimes ugly and painful, but it's kinetic and it's the craziest thing. And when people come here, even me, for me, like who understands this somewhat, and I come in as a half insider, half outsider, I get this sense and it's very emotional for me, actually. Like in the US, I feel very stoic about all that's happening i feel like i was raised in that but when i come back here it's like i'm going into this other dimension where

Starting point is 01:57:29 everyone here is moving twice as fast it's like the feeling like when you go to new york the physical kinetic aspect of what's happening there you're like wow la people are so moving so slowly physically moving slowly yeah and in new y, you're like, you feel tired after like a couple of days in Manhattan. You come to Korea, I think only New Yorkers can really understand living in Seoul because you have to move fast. It's kinetic. It is hyper kinetic. And I think people should visit, man. I really do. I think people should visit and learn some korean it's such a beautiful language the writing especially if you've only ever read romanized alphabet what a fun thing to stretch your brain and learn some korean because it's so as you said regular

Starting point is 01:58:18 like once you have it you have it it's not like english where you can have fish, like fuh is F-I-S-H, and then enough is O-U-F-F-F-F. Same sound, O-U-G-H. It's like, oh my God, this language. It's a mess. It's a complete mess. And Korean is super regular. And what I would say also about language,

Starting point is 01:58:38 just as an addendum to what we're talking about, is if you learn 10 sentences, anybody can learn 10 sentences, anybody. It will fundamentally change your experience in a country. Full stop. People will respond to you differently. You will also be a better guest in that country. And it's fun.

Starting point is 01:58:57 And you can learn 10 sentences. It's not that hard. And there's going to be stuff. For instance, I love sparkling water. I know every day I'm going to ask for sparkling water. So it's like, learn how to ask for sparkling water. And then like, every time I get an omelet, it's like, oh yeah, there's no salt and pepper. Why is there no salt and pepper in this country? And I'm like, I know I'm going to have to ask for at least salt. It's like, learn how to say salt. And there are a couple of other just fun tips for folks. Like

Starting point is 01:59:22 you can come up with a couple of, because you're going to be entertaining as a foreigner trying to learn a foreign language like Korean. So you need to learn a couple of things that are like off menu. Because like, where's the bathroom is on menu. Like they would expect that's something you would learn. Well, asking for food. I mean, so what's been your thought about Korean food so far? I mean, you've had Korean food in the US or, you know, that version of it. So what

Starting point is 01:59:45 do you think so far? Oh man, Korean food is incredible. Let's give a couple, just on the language thing, I'll wrap it up real fast, which is like learn a couple of phrases that are kind of funny. So for instance, in almost any language, you can learn to say something like long time no see, which by the way, in English is borrowed directly from Chinese. 好久不见. Long time no see. But you can, you know, お久しぶりじゃない? Like in Japanese or here, like 我的がんまねえんだ。

Starting point is 02:00:10 Like use a really polite form. Wow, that was good. Oh, thanks. And people are like, what? I'm like, I'm just kidding. It's not that long. And people get a good laugh out of it. So you can learn a couple of things like that.

Starting point is 02:00:20 Or like, you know, 順順にやさよ。 Like, just like, no rush, take it easy. Like, do it slowly. So learn a couple of things like that. And you know like just like like no rush take it easy like do it slowly so learn a couple of things like that and you'll just have a better time korean food is fucking amazing it's so good it's so good and i did have a funny experience so i'll be honest i've not had much korean barbecue but i wanted to of course have a korean barbecue and went out to korean

Starting point is 02:00:42 barbecue and there were a bunch of side dishes, and I started eating the salad because it looked like an appetizer. The guys were like, that's not an appetizer. It's a side dish that you eat when the beef comes out. I was like, oh, okay, great. So the beef comes out, and number one. And it was kalbi? I'm not sure. Korean barbecue?

Starting point is 02:01:04 Korean barbecue. Short rib? It wasn't short rib. It was different cuts. It wasn't short rib in this case. It it was kalbi? Kalbi? I'm not sure. Korean barbecue? Korean barbecue. Short rib? It wasn't short rib. No. It was different cuts. It wasn't short rib in this case. It wasn't kalbi. However, the meat comes out, and I was like, oh.

Starting point is 02:01:12 Because in Japan, it's like, if you have meat, you have rice. Yeah. And I was like, oh, we're going to eat rice with it. And they're like, well, no, you kind of have the rice like a dessert. And I was like, huh. Okay. Never would have guessed that. So you have the rice at the end. At least we did. I'm two like, huh, okay. Never would have guessed that. So you have the rice at the

Starting point is 02:01:25 end, at least we did. I'm two for two at this now and had some, what was it? It was like fermented soybean soup towards the end. But another aspect that I had never run into, and this leads to a couple of open questions for me, is I think it was sesame oil. And one of the guys with me was like, yeah, this is kind of our olive oil. We dip the beef into the sesame oil, which I'd never done before. And I was like, okay. The sesame oil was sort of like a condiment, right?

Starting point is 02:01:53 It was like how you dip bread. And so you eat this, it's basically just all meat all the time for a section. You have a little bit of kimchi, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And what i loved was also in this particular case and i think this is not true everywhere but they were using charcoal instead of just say some kind of burner with gas and the heat was so high that these thick cuts

Starting point is 02:02:22 were cooking pretty much completely within a handful of minutes. The other thing unique in my experience with Korea versus anywhere I've been in East Asia, even Central Asia, is you guys use scissors a lot. Scissors for meat, scissors for cutting stuff. By the way, that annoys my wife so much because I cook a lot of barbecue. I'm a self-professed grill master for my family. I have meat scissors, and I'm constantly clipping. Yeah, why the hell would you use a knife?

Starting point is 02:02:56 It makes so much sense. Have you seen the Korean meat scissors that have the bottle cap opener for beer? Oh, that's genius. Right in the middle. That makes all the sense in the world. Yeah, it makes all the sense in the world so korean barbecue has been amazing and i would say i was surprised and i shouldn't be but i came in blank slate right i really didn't know what i was going to experience here but if you go to where you took me for instance to people hear the word hyundai and they think car yeah like low-end car yeah but if you go to the hyundai department store which is super lux super deluxe beautiful

Starting point is 02:03:36 and trust me i'm not a department store guy but this is like the most beautiful department store i've ever been in and the basement, which is like a city, is this food court. But food court is a bullshit term for what this is. It is just this never-ending sea of culinary delights of every variety. And the ice cream, the croissants, the pastries. Korea really knows how to do food.

Starting point is 02:04:08 The food is spectacular. And I think that that is actually the most important part of Korean soft power. If we're talking about this as an export economy, it is the first thing that people loved, even for K-pop food. There's not one person that I've taken to Korean barbecue for the first time that hasn't said, I cannot believe I've never eaten this before. This is incredible. I'll give you a funny story about Austin, your current city. Back in 2011, I was down there for South by Southwest.

Starting point is 02:04:43 My startup had just launched. It was a music app startup. And a friend from Food and Wine Magazine asked me if I wanted to be a contestant in a barbecue sauce contest in Austin as part of South by Southwest. I said, sure. I said, what do I need to do? Well, you need to go out and get your own materials at the grocery store. And then we're going to compete and we're going to grill. Everyone's going to be around there. There's going to be a whole audience and it's going to be an audience participation and vote. So I was like, I only know how to cook one type of barbecue, but I'll try. So I basically did an American barbecue recipe and I took a Korean barbecue recipe,

Starting point is 02:05:20 which my mother taught me. And I knew like the back of my hand, I could do that in my sleep. So I got soy sauce, I got sesame oil, I got pears. I got like Bartlett pears because they didn't have the Asian pears in Austin. And then brown sugar, Coca-Cola.

Starting point is 02:05:34 Wow. Garlic, sesame seeds, everything. And I made a Korean barbecue marinade. And then I put in like the tomatoes and I put in, I got some molasses, put that in there. And then I put in like the tomatoes and I put in, I got some molasses,

Starting point is 02:05:46 put that in there and I made this whole big pot and put some onions in there too, just to give it a little bit more kick. And I put in a pot, I didn't describe it to anyone. So I made a Korean barbecue marinade in a Texas style and put in this big pot. And I had a friend there,

Starting point is 02:06:03 Michael Galpert, who was from New York at the time. He was watching me do this big pot. And I had a friend there, Michael Galpert, who was from New York at the time. He was watching me do this whole thing. Everyone else had done some sort of Carolina barbecue or Memphis barbecue. And you'd go up and you'd take these grilled chicken drumsticks and these baby back ribs that were unsauced and unseasoned, but grilled. And people would go try it. And everyone loved it.

Starting point is 02:06:24 My pot, the whole thing was like whose pot would get lower first and everyone said what's in that i said soy sauce sesame oil garlic right i said i'm sorry i don't have any kimchi for you but it would just it would just top it off and so i i really feel like of all the soft power things, of all the exports, cultural exports, Korean food is the most important one because look, I will not be that overly proud Korean, Korean American and say, this is better than everyone else.

Starting point is 02:06:57 I will say that Korean food is the best food on the planet. I've tried everything. I love Japanese food. I love Mexican food. I love Italian food French food obviously and fine dining

Starting point is 02:07:07 but and you know I think Korean food is the original export other than the skilled labor

Starting point is 02:07:15 from the 60s and 70s and whenever you see a Korean restaurant if you go there this is like learning Korean when you go to Seoul

Starting point is 02:07:24 when you visit Seoul if you find a Korean restaurant in your learning Korean when you go to Seoul, when you visit Seoul. If you find a Korean restaurant in your town, wherever you are, go up to them and practice your Korean. Yeah. And say, ask them, what would you eat? You can speak English to them, it's fine. But say, what would you eat? And say, I heard that Koreans have great stews. Do you have a stew?

Starting point is 02:07:43 Sundubu jjigae. Denjang jjigae. Jjigae. And these stews, Do you have a stew? Sundubu jjigae. Doenjang jjigae. Jjigae. And these stews, Korean food is comfort food. Yeah. There are a lot of people trying to make upscale food, and there are people like Corey Lee at Bennu in San Francisco and David Chang at Mokfuku that have perfected an upscale version of Korean food.

Starting point is 02:08:00 But Korean food is comfort food. It's home cooking food. We had food the other day, and I was like, you've got to eat the stuff. That's like, this is a poor country's food, and that's the best stuff. The other stuff is great. So anyways, I wanted to give kudos to the original Korean export that everyone loves, which is Korean barbecue. Korean barbecue and Korean food.

Starting point is 02:08:22 And the stews, I didn't expect to be broadsided by the stews. They're so delicious. And fair warning, it can get pretty spicy. Korean food can get pretty spicy. It can get murky. It can get murky. Unless you're Korean or unless you've looked at the recipe and the preparation, you kind of don't know what's in there.

Starting point is 02:08:53 Murky. korean or unless you've looked at the recipe and the preparation kind of don't know what's in there murky and you can definitely earn points also just by speaking a little bit of korean you can just say like you get a thousand points of credit from any korean if you try to speak the language. They love it. It'll smooth all rough edges on anything that you're talking about with them if you try, if you at least try. It's just a word, just a word or two, right? Thank you.

Starting point is 02:09:15 I guess, 맛있어요. It's like, it is delicious. So you could say, if you want to say it's really good, or very good, you say,

Starting point is 02:09:23 아주 맛있어요. 아주 맛있어요. 아주 맛있어요. Or 참. 자주 or 참. Oh, 참 is a good one. Or 굉장히. 굉장히. Yeah, that's like a lot.

Starting point is 02:09:34 굉장히 맛있었어요. And when you're eating, if you don't finish it, that's a silent way of saying it wasn't good. I learned this the hard way going to, I flew, this is, of course, this is what I do. I flew to LA, then I went to San Diego because I wanted to train with a Korean archery coach. Because there are a couple of things I'll just mention in passing. We got to talk about why the sports that Koreans are particularly good at. Yeah. I mean, for a long time, maybe even still, breakdancing, Koreans were

Starting point is 02:10:09 many levels above everybody else. I mean, they were by far the best in the world. Archery, by far the best in the world. Somebody can fact check this, but I think the women's archery gold medal has been taken by Koreansoreans for every olympics since the koreans started competing i actually know a lot about why that's the case on the archery side because it's like systematized at every level of education and it's a very big deal but i went out to he was like you and me we're gonna have dinner and that's not really the thing you say no to. So I'm like, of course we're going to have dinner. So I go out to Korean barbecue and he ordered so much food. I mean, I'm 170 now. I used to be at my highest and I wasn't fat, 220. I can eat. And he buried me in food. But then he said to me, I still had all this food

Starting point is 02:11:03 in front of me. And he's like, yeah, you can't leave that basically okay yeah that's like yeah he's like you key he's like yeah you can't leave rice I mean take off your shoes bow say the food is good finish your plate and bowl yeah and all is good everything's good I wanted to talk a little bit about the Big Damjin film. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just talking a little bit about film. We were at Sundance together in Utah. Park City.

Starting point is 02:11:34 Great city. Great place. Best time to go skiing or snowboarding is during Sundance. Because nobody's skiing. They're all at the festival, and then the locals don't want to get anywhere near the place. That's right. Because nobody's skiing. They're all at the festival and then the locals don't want to get anywhere near the place. That's right. Because it's mayhem.

Starting point is 02:11:49 We premiered our documentary on... Just to be clear, ours, not me and Steve's. Oh, no, sorry. The collective we or ours, the great director and team, including Steve Yoon, actor, but also executive producer

Starting point is 02:12:04 on this film with me. And you came to that. But I would love to hear some of your thoughts on this because he is the most famous Korean artist. Well, why don't you tell people the title? The title of the documentary of this Korean artist is Moon is the Oldest TV. It's on Apple and it'll be on Netflix probably probably by the time this podcast comes out which will be great and the quick background the high level background is namjoon paik or in korean we would

Starting point is 02:12:33 say baek namjoon because we say the last name first baek namjoon is the most famous korean artist of the 20th century was the father of digital and video art. So whenever you see TVs all set up in an array like a human. Yeah, coordinate displays. Yeah, and he did the TV Buddha, which is probably his most famous work, with a camera constantly taking video on a cathode ray tube of a sitting Buddha statue, and the Buddha's looking at himself. And he coined the term information superhighway and kind of predicted social media. He is well-regarded in the art world,

Starting point is 02:13:08 but not really known outside, which is kind of interesting. So it was a film out of passion for his story. And you got to see it. So I would love to hear kind of you coming in without knowing. I don't think you knew about him. Yeah, I knew very little about him.

Starting point is 02:13:23 I mean, really just what you had told me and i really enjoyed the window into his personal story his creative process his insanity on some level in the sense that he was highly experimental also and this is true for so many artists and innovators, deeply tortured might be too strong a word, but I went through some very difficult times, had very little money at points. I remember the footage of one of his apartments just caving in, like water coming through the ceilings. And the difficulty in forging a path and experimenting when you're not getting a lot of applause from any majority whatsoever. because it's one thing to be say an entrepreneur in silicon valley in a culture where the risk

Starting point is 02:14:28 taker is lionized and even failure on some level and many levels is accepted where you'll be applauded for trying versus what he was doing which is I think, for most people in most cultures in most times, which is really operating at the fringe with other people who are doing this type of experimentation, not just artists, but also technologists, and taking the path less traveled, which is really, really painful at times, and in many instances, not financially rewarding. So I was just impressed with his tenacity. And he's also just such a character. And I said this to you the other day, but one of my favorite lines was, Namjoon Paik spoke many languages, none of them well. He spoke a lot of languages, but they were all broken.

Starting point is 02:15:26 He spoke Pikish. He spoke Pikish. And I found that so endearing, real endearing guy as well. Well, his story is really interesting. He is one of those breakthrough moments for Korean culture and society in that he was the only internationally known artist in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and even into the 2000s. And then he passed away in that decade. He was the ambassador or the representative, as crazy as he might've seemed to everyone, that in the art world, he was appreciated, admired, and followed for that. And it's very un-Korean for that time period. You have to remember that at that time period, Korea was under essentially

Starting point is 02:16:11 a dictatorial, a somewhat elected administration. And to clarify for folks also, I mean, he was outside of, he was in Germany, he was in the US. He was part of the diaspora. Yeah, he was part of the diaspora. If he had done what he was doing in Korea, he would have been censored. It was too weird. It was too out there. It was too counterpolitical on all respects. And even when he visited, you saw that footage. He was nervous that he would not be able to leave Korea and that he would get locked up.

Starting point is 02:16:42 Yeah, when he visited much later. Right. But they embraced him, which is really interesting because if he had done all that here, he would have been shut down. But the fact that he did it out in the world and became well-known and did these live broadcasts that ended up looking like the future YouTube variety show. I forgot about some of those. Oh my God.

Starting point is 02:17:03 Yeah. I mean, in the show notes, you got to put a link to this. Yeah, we'll put a link. There's a free streaming link, I think, somewhere. So it won't be about like a commercial thing. But he became such a popular figure in Korea despite doing that out there. And it was something that if he had done it here,

Starting point is 02:17:19 it would have been panned, right? Yeah. It may be censored, right? And I think that that is part of that han he struggled with mental health yeah big time with relationships with his own art and his own identity and failure and in a weird way it's sort of a he represented the unexpected hero to a lot of artists and thinkers of the time. There was a thing in Korean music before K-pop. There was an extremely underground, small, but amazing jazz and rock scene,

Starting point is 02:17:56 especially psych rock. There was a band called High Five and High Six. What is that? I mean, the best version of Inagada davida is an obscure korean psych rock band what is psych rock this is a genre that i'm not familiar with psych rock is psychedelic rock right oh okay and psychological rock in the 60s and 70s when that was popular in the u.s yeah koreans were doing that but here's thing. Government censors back then would shut down anything that looked a little- Suspect.

Starting point is 02:18:30 Edgy and, yeah, counter to the- Counterculture. Yeah, represented counterculture at the time. So they would put out these album covers on the LPs that looked like flowers and blue sky and clouds and just really weird, fluffy covers. But the music inside was serious. And it was trippy. It was intense.

Starting point is 02:18:57 So it was like Little House on the Prairie on the front and then Rammstein on the inside. It's kind of like, judge this book by its cover, please. Because inside is some really like, you know. Subversive stuff. Not only subversive, but they were dancing to this, enjoying this inside of small clubs and bars and apartments. Because this couldn't be a thing that you could do in a big concert hall.

Starting point is 02:19:22 The government censors are there, right? Yeah. So I want to call out that the diaspora is really important to a lot of what's happened too so if you look a lot of k-pop a lot of k-pop people are coming back from the u.s and coming back from other countries where they've learned something another culture and they're bringing it back and they're adding to it here yeah so a lot of the dance groups i actually sponsored the first world b-boy championships called r16 in seoul in 2008

Starting point is 02:19:53 no kidding yeah didn't know that and all the best b-boy crews from around the world france it was all country-based like an olympics it's like france versus japan u.s versus korea right and Japan, US versus Korea, right? And everyone convened in Seoul, outskirts of Seoul, and it was government-supported, which is the craziest thing. And it was an incredible moment, but it was very clear that dance culture here, which is very strong today, came from the Korean gyopo that had come back. They brought it from New York. They brought it from LA and they brought it back and improved it. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:20:31 And cooking the same thing. There's a lot of chefs that have come back from the US or France or UK, come back to Seoul. So there's this export, but then there's also this reverse immigration happening where they're coming back. So it's a really exciting time to be in Seoul. So there's this export, but then there's also this reverse immigration happening where they're coming back. So it's a really exciting time to be in Seoul. Startups are rising and that's now a new career option. There's still huge problems with North and South Korea, the tension and the geopolitical fear and anxiety that happens, but there's something really dynamic and it feels like we don't know

Starting point is 02:21:06 how long this will last not just because of like the danger of geopolitical stuff but also because of does it get dialed in like tokyo one day and becomes everything gets really locked in defined just in terms of like stasis yeah. Yeah. And right now, it feels really transitional. Yeah. I mean, it feels to me, at least, and look, I've only been here five days, so what do I know? But I pay a lot of attention to first impressions, and it has a very alive feeling to it. It has, similar to the way that, in a sense,

Starting point is 02:21:46 like the way that Austin feels right now, has like an adolescent growth feeling to it. There's a lot of energy and there's a lot of velocity. There's many things being built. At least I'm speaking about Austin now, but like restaurants

Starting point is 02:22:02 being opened, companies being started, people moving companies there, lots of people moving there for the cultural stuff. It has a feeling of being pregnant with possibilities, which is the vibe that I get here walking through these neighborhoods. I'm like, okay, yeah, I bet if I come back here in three, five years,

Starting point is 02:22:17 like 70% of these stores will have changed. I mean, there'll be a lot of differences. The director, Amanda Kim of the documentary, the Dime June Peik documentary, she lived in New York and she lives in Paris now. We did a premiere screening here and she said that it was so emotional, even though she hasn't spent a lot of time in Korea, so emotional to have been the director to present to Koreans this film about the most important artist of all Korean people in the modern era, to present that back. And she said it was just not only a mind-blowing experience for her as a director,

Starting point is 02:22:56 but as a Korean gyopo coming back to present that. And so this is something that I think a lot of, you know, any of your listeners who are Korean American or Asian American, or even from India and thinking about that reverse brain drain, as they call it. Yeah. The cycle, like the cycling back,

Starting point is 02:23:16 the feedback loop. So important. The one thing we were eating mandu the other day, mandu is a Mongolian word. That's Mongolian word. China uses certain parts of China use mandu the other day mandu is a mongolian word that's mongolian word china uses certain parts of china use mandu korea uses mandu turkey uses mandu pakistan uses mandu food is the original spice food carried by mongolians rom. It's the original cultural export. Yeah. Korean food, Korean film, Korean music, Korean beauty, all of this is the only thing that will keep Korea alive in perpetuity. This could all be gone.

Starting point is 02:24:01 It's too small of a country, too small of a population, on too tenuous of a peninsula, literally in the geographic center of all the tension in the region. So that export, that pollen, that is the existence, right? Yeah, totally. What's happening right now with the technology industry here, arts, food, like all of that. It feels really like it's peaking. There's this K wave across all these things.

Starting point is 02:24:36 And I can't think of a more exciting time to be here than literally right now. Yeah. And for the next five, 10 years, if I didn't have a family that's in schools and a fund that is headquartered in San Francisco, this would be the best place, definitely in Asia. It's like groaning and squeaking and screaming. Bursting at the seams. Yeah, I really encourage people to check it out. And also to paint a picture,

Starting point is 02:25:26 we're sitting in this hotel room, looking out, beautiful sunny day, which is crazy because it was snowing earlier. You were saying as soon as you think you got it figured out, Korean weather really fucks with you. It's all over the place, but it's this beautiful mountain range right outside the window. And so it has this feeling of, reminds me in a sense of, say, a Salt Lake City where you have the Wasatch and this beautiful range, which I also did not expect. And it totally changes the feeling in the city, knowing that you can look up, at least in this neighborhood, and see these mountains. It's a stunning city. And hopefully this puts it on the map for some people as a possibility for visiting. I will also say, huge difference experientially for a native English speaker here, say, compared to Japan, all due respect to Japan. I love Japan. I've spent a ton of time there, but the English level is higher here. So it's easier to get around and interact and make requests and solve problems and so on. So that is also a huge benefit to the international community is I've just found it much easier to, because my Korean, as hard as I might try in a handful of days, still pretty

Starting point is 02:26:27 limited. So I do need to lean on the English. Anything else that we should cover before we wind to a close? Anything else you'd like to say before we land the plane? I think we're good. What do you think? I think we're good. I think we're good, man. Thanks for having me. It's been a fun week. It's been a great week. We've covered a lot with a short amount of time, but still some more to come.

Starting point is 02:26:53 Yeah, we've got some more adventure to do. And to everybody listening, as always, I'll put links to everything that we can pull from this conversation. Links to everything we discussed in the show notes at TimDotBlog slash podcast. And also, as always, until next time, be just a bit nicer, a bit kinder than is necessary,

Starting point is 02:27:15 not just to other people, but to yourself. And 감사합니다. Thanks. 감사합니다. Listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off.

Starting point is 02:27:27 And that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have

Starting point is 02:27:51 started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email, and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #707: Live from South Korea — Steve Jang on Korea’s Exploding “Soft Power,” The Poverty-to-Power Playbook, K-Pop, “Han” Energy, Must-See Movies, Export Economies, and Much More

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