Euny Hong > Quotes

“If Korea were a person, it would be diagnosed as a neurotic, with both an inferiority and a superiority complex.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Irony is that special privilege of wealthy nations;”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“You may have an iPhone, for example, but its microchips are made by Apple’s biggest competitor—the Korean electronics company Samsung.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Basically, Koreans are the Marlboro Men of Asia.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“K-pop export model: the star-making process is so unpleasant that there are not many countries whose aspiring stars would put up with it. Korean youth, meanwhile, are used to intense sadomasochistic academic pressure, extreme discipline, constant criticism, and zero sleep. Of”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“The teachers never explained what this debt was all about, but we knew it was an embarrassment on the level of a national bedwetting.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“These kinds of mini-enterprises...prolonged the precious, Elysian period of childhood in a way I did not see in the US, where kids started hanging out at the mall and acted like teeny boppers from age 9 or 10.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Buatlah pernyataan bila Anda suka, tentu saja, tetapi sadarilah konteks seblum Anda membuat konteks tanpa sengaja.”
― Euny Hong, The Power of Nunchi: The Korean Secret to Happiness and Success

“When I asked why StarCraft 2 in particular was so popular in Korea, he said, “The game ends quickly, so you can start a new one,” echoing one of the traits for which Koreans are best known—impatience. “Koreans like games that are fast and they like to compete.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Please write your name on the envelope before you put your poop in, because you’ll find it difficult to write on it afterward.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“First-worlders have the luxury of not having to think about waste elimination very much. But for a third-worlder, poop is a big preoccupation.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Hallyu,”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Being Korean in America when I was a child was like being a smoker now. We were pariahs with filthy smelly habits that made our friends not want to come over to play. Bobby”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Cinema is yet another area in which government intervention in culture paid off in spades. Korea once again demonstrated its unique magic trick: by passing a few new laws and fertilizing the right areas with money, it was able to spur explosive creativity and an entire film renaissance. In”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“July 1998, CEO Yun and nine other Samsung executives locked themselves up in a hotel and wrote their resignation letters. They made a pact that they would put the letters away for five months, at the end of which they would actually resign if they didn’t cut company costs by 30 percent.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Samsung, “They did market research and came up with good news: nobody had heard of Samsung.” So the name stayed, even as they reinvented themselves, in what has become a textbook case of successful rebranding strategy. Samsung (which means “three stars”) began in 1938 as a Korean-owned fruit and fish company, during the period of Japanese rule.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Jelaslah bahwa orang yang amat bebal terhadap reaksi orang lain pasti lebih banyak memikirkan diri sendiri ketimbang orang lain.”
― Euny Hong, The Power of Nunchi: The Korean Secret to Happiness and Success

“My memorization skills were so well honed at Korean school that it's now become an involuntary and automatic reflex. I have almost perfect recall of conversations I've had going back about twenty years or so. If required, I can recite an entire thirty-minute exchange verbatim. Sometimes this is useful, as when I'm arguing with a male companion about whether one of us did or did not break some previously made promise. However, my gift of recall is very annoying to other people. They forgot to tell us at Korean school that memory does not lead to a happy life.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Samsung digital TVs depended on countries making the switch from analog to digital television, which is why Samsung TVs did not take over world market share until this century.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“In recent decades, the biggest enemies of shamanism have been Korea’s many fervent Christians. Which, said Mason, is highly ironic, since Korean Christianity is rather shamanistic. If you’ve ever been to some of these churches in Korea, you know exactly what he’s talking about. Even at some churches of “mainstream” denominations, like Presbyterianism, people can be seen going into a trance and speaking in tongues. An”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“dramas are now beloved by Asia as a whole. In Taiwan, the airtime devoted to Korean dramas was getting so out of control that in 2012, Taiwan’s National Communications Commission called upon a Taiwanese network to reduce its primetime showings of Korean programs and increase the number of hours devoted to non-Korean shows.3 Korean”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“On the one hand, Korea has become quite a welcoming place for foreigners; many westerners visiting Korea share glowing reports about Korean hospitality and how modern the country seems. On the other hand, Koreans raised abroad have a very hard time smoothly transitioning into Korean society. I am no exception. I”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Many people outside Korea subscribe to the belief that Korean food contains mystic healing properties. The SARS bird flu epidemic of 2003 made kimchi ubiquitous throughout Asia. SARs raged throughout China, Southeast Asia, and even Canada and parts of Europe, with about 8,000 reported cases and about 750 deaths. Meanwhile, South Korea experienced zero bird flu–related deaths (there were two cases, both nonfatal). Many theories as to South Korea’s immunity have been postulated; none were conclusive. One study suggested that the enzymes contained in kimchi strengthened immunity in birds; some people made the mental leap to assume that this also protected them from bird flu. Through”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Korea is the future. Welcome to the future.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“By “good deal,” Lee is referring to the world’s worst-kept secret: North Korea makes these threats to extort money from the rest of the world, in the form of “humanitarian aid.” South”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Korea was my Zion. I had read too many British novels about wretched children finding out they were actually of noble birth and I was expecting to be salaamed upon arriving at the Seoul airport.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Whenever kids asked me, “Are you Chinese?”—which was often—I would invariably respond yes. My mother heard me doing this once and gave me hell for it. “Why didn’t you say you were Korean?” she asked. I was not doing that again, not after an incident in first grade in which a boy told me: “You’re lying. There is no such place.” I remember briefly wondering whether my parents had been bullshitting me about where they came from.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“Psy is the paradigm shift within the paradigm shift. And his life and bewildering rise to fame are an embodiment of the changes in Korea and Korean society over the last few decades. Psy”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“I’ve made much worse gaffes, like the time I accidentally spilled hot soup on a Nobel laureate’s lap and then set fire to his kitchen.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“K-culture has the potential to be a powerful diplomatic tool. I'm convinced that the late Korean president Kim Daejung will be proven right in his prediction that Haley, not politics will bring north and south together. North Korean black marketers are literally risking their lives to smuggle in copies of South Korean videos and dramas. In 2009, a North Korean defector to the south told Time magazine that in North Korea, bootleg American movies fetched 35 cents on the black market, whereas South Korean movies cost $3.75, because the punishment for being caught with the latter is much more severe.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture