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Title | Korea CQ - Epilogue of Lecture on ‘Present and Future of Korean Wave’ | ||||
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Posted by | webmaster | Hit | 5599 | Date | 2015.04.09 |
Dear Korea CQ members,
I hope you are having a great day.
On April 7, Korea CQ had the lecture on ‘Present and Future of Korean wave’ by Mr. Song Seung-whan at resident of Turkish ambassador.
Members participated are: H.E. Arslan Hakan Okcal, Pinar Okcal, H.E. Elisabeth Bertagnoli, H.E. Omar Nahar, Seung-whan Song, Susie Lee, Micky Kim, Junghwa Choi, Do-won Seol, Bill Miner, Lissa Miner, Chung Hyon Hwang, Seung-Jae Yoo, Hyung Taek Hong, Hooran Kim, Jae Woo James Park, Didier Beltoise, Sung Baek Lee, Vivian Yoon Joo Han, Esther Na, Jae Chul Sung, Kay Kang, Crystal Park, Joel Lee, and Jae-heun Kim attended.
After ending the dinner by delicious dessert, lecture of Mr. Seung-whan Song, president of PMC Production and expert on Korean cultural industry, was started. The lecture was about his experience and opinion of how he made ‘NANTA’, the performance that represents Korea, what is the key of performing ‘NANTA’ for consecutively 18 years, and is Korean wave about K-pop and K-drama is just a coincidence or output of desperate effort.
It was interesting lecture to learn the background of NANTA’s creation and process of success by using episodes happening in kitchen.
We thanks to H.E. Arslan Hakan Okcal and Mrs. Pinar Okcal for his warm hospitality from giving us an opportunity to have an unforgettable night at his venue to offer us to taste the wonderful Turkish gastronomy and we also thank all members who were able to take their precious time to attend the Korea CQ lecture.
Also we specially thank Seung-whan Song for his informative lecture, Esther Na for sponsoring books about Turkey, and Crystal Park for her outstanding interpretation help.
Lecture note of president Seung-whan Song is attached below. Please kindly look at it.
Thank you again for your unwavering support and have a nice day.
Korea CQ Soo Yeon Kim
<Lecture note of President Song Seung-whan> Lecturer: Song Seung-whan, President of PMC Production
NANTA’s planning background I felt ‘actor’ was a passive career. And to be more active, I start to be interested in producing musical. About the overseas performance like Broadway musical, I don’t think it suits to Korean culture. This is where I started to think of making performance which suits us, the Koreans. Korea’s domestic market was so small to make the profit. Due to this bad circumstances, it was necessary for us to enter the overseas market. To enter the international performance industry, we needed to overcome language barrier. In order to overcome, I chose ‘Global Universality’ and ‘Korea’s traditional emotion.’ I chose Global universality because I believe when everyone sympathize with the same part of performance, that is when we achieve cultural communication. Also to overcome the limitation of capital, I chose Korea’s unique and oriental subject. When I thought about ‘what is the content that represents Korea?’ I suddenly thought of ‘samul-nori’. Also kitchen is where we can experience the beating, the key of samul-nori, most often, I chose the kitchen as our set and the cooks are our main character.
1. Finding worldwide agent! I introduced NANTA to promoters, who buy and sell performances to Tokyo, LA, Paris, New York, and London. Finally, I met’ Broadway Asia’ which is a world renowned performance agency.
2. Participating Worldwide Festival I participated in Edinburgh International Festival, which is world famous performing festival and performance market. With an active promotion, all tickets were sold out for every NANTA performance in Edinburgh International Festival. Also, Nanta was nominated as best 10 performance in Edinburgh international festival by the magazine ‘The List’. After the Edinburgh festival, we made a contract with American Garden Theater in Disney World and ‘Promax’ in Japan to perform Tokyo and Osaka. And now NANTA is performing in 51 countries and 289 cities.
Developing fixed-income and carve out a niche market
In the past, majority of foreign tourists of Korea were Japanese, and they needed performance that every family member can enjoy in evening time. I visited many agencies and persuaded them, and as a result NANTA became the regular program for many agencies.
Korea’s National brand Image In 90’s, the reputation for ‘Made in Korea’ was negative. People thought ‘Made in Korea’ were low quality and cheap price product. My goal is to promote Korea to the world through performance.
A. Song Seung-whan, President of PMC production: I’m not thinking to have business about discovering new Hallyu star. The key of NANTA’s success is we don’t have a star actor and actress. There is only one Girl’s Generation, but NANTA has 10 teams worldwide. This is the key advantage of NANTA.
Q. Bill Miner, Chairman of Chevron: There were some time you want to give up NANTA, what was the reason that you could carry on? A. Song Seung-whan, President of PMC production: I have positive personality. My dream was to enter the Broadway so I could bear all the difficulties until my dreams come true.
Q. Park Jae Woo James, Director of Dr. Park’s Plastic Surgery: Now in days China and Japan is copying some of our famous Entertainment Programs. Specially, China is growing so fast. Do you think that someday China will catch up Korea culturally? A. Song Seung-whan, President of PMC production: We will open new NANTA Theater in Guangzhou in July. I believe Guangzhou is one of the biggest markets in China. In the past, Korea also copied contents of US, and I think we could have developed because of that. Also, because China’s domestic market is so big by themselves, they are not interested to enter the world market. In contrast, Korea is still trying hard to enter new markets worldwide.
Q. Kim Jae heun, Journalist: I want to ask 2 questions. First, in your opinion what will be the next content for Hallyu? Second, every country has different culture and audience and how could you handle all that? A. Song Seung-whan, President of PMC production: People can enjoy drama and music in cheap price. For some period, I think K-pop will keep its popularity for long time. Also, I guess K-food has a lot of potential to develop. For the second question, I could handle different audiences of different countries because of the ‘Global universality.’
Q. Kay Kang, Director of Congdu: Are you preparing similar performance as NANTA? A. Song Seung-whan, President of PMC production: People are questioned me all the time on ‘What is the next performance?’ I have produced many other performances so far and I am also preparing new performances. |