Miky Lee, vice chair of Korea’s CJ Group, was handed the Asian Hall of Fame’s Centennial Medal of Lifetime Achievement in Los Angeles. K-pop pioneer Lee Soo-man did the honors. Lee Soo-man, the SM Entertainment founder who is now key producer at A2O Entertainment, reminded the audience that Miky Lee had introduced him at the same event a year earlier and called him the godfather of K-pop.
Miky Lee was recognized for more than 30 years of connecting Korea with audiences abroad through film, music and television. The two have been friends for more than 50 years. Lee Soo-man said he first met her when he was a college student who was already a well-known singer and radio and TV host, and she was still a middle schooler.
He also told the audience about a phone call he got from her a few years ago while he was in Dubai. She told him to wait for her, then flew in from the U.S. and arrived the next day. He didn’t say what the visit was about.
Looking back to 1995, when CJ was still known as a food company, Lee Soo-man said: “Korea was hardly a major player in the global entertainment industry. But Miky saw something others didn’t.” He said she helped steer CJ’s DreamWorks investment that year, helped transform Korea’s film industry through CGV, and played a part in turning the MAMA Awards and KCON into worldwide platforms. We may take it for granted, but we cannot live without it,” Miky Lee said in her acceptance speech.
She was born in Knoxville, Tenn., and raised in Seoul, and she said that belief came from her grandfather, who founded both CJ and Samsung and liked to say, “No culture, no country!” She and her brother Jay took those words to heart at what was then a food business. Why not their eyes and ears, too?” she recalled them saying. She said the DreamWorks deal was a chance to learn from the best, not a grab at Hollywood glamour.
After it came CGV in 1998, Korea’s first multiplex, then a move into cable TV and the launch of production house Studio Dragon. She said Mnet was created to give a new generation somewhere to discover homegrown music. Nearly 85% of the songs aired on Korean television were once American pop, she said, but by the 2000s the balance had reversed.
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