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. “Well, tonight, I’d like to return the favor,” he said. “If I am the godfather of K-pop, then Miky Lee is the godmother of K-culture.”
The Asian Hall of Fame gives the medal to inductees it sees as people of strong character who have raised the bar in their industries, made a cultural mark and worked across racial lines. 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. “But even then, she was already the boss,” he said.
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. “I’ve learned over the years that it’s very difficult to say no to Miky Lee,” he said.
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.
“Culture is like oxygen. 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. “We’ve been entertaining people’s mouths. 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. The MAMA Awards and KCON later carried that community to cities including Bangkok, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Tokyo. “‘Music Makes One.’ That was the dream. And the fans brought it to life,” she said.
Among the Korean filmmakers she has worked with, she named Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon Ho, Lee Chang-dong and “Squid Game” creator Hwang Dong-hyuk. She also pointed to Lee Isaac Chung, “KPop Demon Hunters” director Maggie Kang and Celine Song as filmmakers whose work proves that stories drawn from Asian cultures can travel far beyond them.
“Our greatest legacy is not simply what we have accomplished, but the opportunities we create for those who come after us,” she said.
Miky Lee was an executive producer on Bong’s “Parasite,” which in 2020 became the first film not in English to take the best picture Oscar, winning four Academy Awards in total. KCON launched in the U.S. in 2012 and has grown from a K-pop festival into a convention that also covers Korean food, beauty and lifestyle. The MAMA Awards started in 1999 as the Mnet Video Music Awards. More recently, CJ ENM launched the First Light StoryHouse label to back projects from Asian creators, with direct investment and co-production starting from early development.
The Asian Hall of Fame is an educational and research institution that recognizes Asian and Indigenous legacy. Its 22nd induction ceremony also honored Blackpink’s Rosé and Japanese baseball great Nomo Hideo. Guests included Korean hip-hop artists Tiger JK and Yoon Mi-rae, X Japan leader Yoshiki, Kang, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures director and president Amy Homma, writer-director-producer Lisa Joy, Locarno Film Festival president and Luma Foundation founder Maja Hoffmann, and early Google board member and investor Ram Shriram.