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.
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.
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.
