Steve Jang on Korea’s Exploding “Soft Power” And Much More | The Tim Ferriss Show

Recorded live in Seoul, this episode is a wide-ranging conversation between Tim Ferriss and his friend Steve Jang about Korea's rise from a colonized, war-torn developing nation to a global powerhouse in entertainment, technology, beauty, and food. They unpack the 'K-wave' as a deliberate, government-seeded phenomenon rather than an accident, tracing it through Korean venture capital, conglomerate funding, and Netflix's international strategy. Steve introduces the cultural concepts of Han (collective suffering and drive) and Jung (deep affectionate bond), arguing these emotions animate Korean film, music, and business. The talk also covers Korea's class struggle, brutal education system, plummeting birth rate, the gyopo diaspora's reverse brain drain, and Korean food as the original and most important cultural export. Tim shares his rapid Korean language-learning method and first impressions of a hyper-kinetic, transitional Seoul.

• Steve reveals the K-wave is not entirely an accident; behind the scenes there is a lot of clever strategy and orchestration driving Korea's entertainment onto the global stage.
  00:55:25
• Korean venture capital began in the 1980s as a government-supported industry focused mainly on media and entertainment (movies, K-pop) rather than technology, seeding today's soft power.
  00:57:30
• Steve explains Han as the Korean people's collective suffering through history, an emotion that can drive great achievement or chaos, and which permeates film, industry, and life.
  01:05:14
• Korea changed Netflix's entire international strategy; after K-content hit in Korea, Netflix multiplied budgets because the programming resonated globally, not just domestically.
  01:28:43
• Steve argues Korean food, especially Korean barbecue and stews, is actually the most important part of Korean soft power and the first export people loved, even before K-pop.
  02:03:09
• Steve's grand theory: because tomorrow is not guaranteed with North Korea 17 miles away, Koreans live with an impatience that makes them extraordinarily industrious and productive.
  01:54:19
• K-pop was built by copying American boy/girl bands and industrializing them into a boot-camp system with auditions, assigned roles, and coaches for every aspect of performance and life.
  01:02:38

• Korea was annexed and colonized by Japan from 1905 to 1945, during which Koreans were forbidden from speaking or writing Korean and forced to take Japanese names.
  00:11:32
• South Korea and North Korea are described as the last remaining divided country from the Cold War split between Western capitalism and Eastern communism, after Germany and Vietnam reunified.
  00:42:54
• Edward Deming's scientific management ideas were ignored in the US but embraced by Japan, leading to the Toyota Way, illustrating how Asia perfects imported concepts.
  01:01:36
• In Korea you must put down a year or two of rent as a deposit for an apartment, versus one to three months in the US, contributing to the high cost of starting a family.
  01:15:50
• During the 1997-98 financial crisis, the Korean government asked citizens to donate personal jewelry to be melted down for the national IMF austerity bailout, and people did.
  01:17:21
• Korea has the highest per-capita luxury consumer market on the planet, much of it driven by borrowed money and a speculative gambling culture in real estate and stocks.
  01:18:22
• A Naver employee told Steve that France is a larger market by gross dollars for licensed K-pop digital content and merch than Korea's own domestic market.
  01:47:53
• Gangnam's main road is named Teheran-ro (Tehano) in tribute to Iran, which hired large numbers of Korean skilled laborers in the 1960s-70s when Korea was very poor.
  01:51:42
• Korean women's archery teams have dominated Olympic gold, which Steve attributes to archery being systematized at every level of education.
  02:09:56
• The documentary 'Moon is the Oldest TV' covers Nam June Paik, the father of digital and video art who coined the term 'information superhighway' and predicted social media.
  02:12:34

Books, products and media the guest or host genuinely endorsed here — with the buy link.

Affiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.