'Merit-based work helps women succeed,' culture designer says

By Kim Ji-soo

CJ’s Creative Center for Convergence Culture (CCCC) in Sangam-dong, western Seoul, is full of energy.

The CCCC takes up the first and second floors of leading cultural content company CJ E&M, which is responsible for such TV dramas as “Youth over Flowers” and “Reply,” as well as large-scale entertainment events such as KCON, an annual K-pop convention held in the U.S. and Japan, and the Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMA).

The center’s aim is to discover and nurture potential content creators, match them with investors and help them monetize their ideas. Thus, CCCC senior vice president, Kang Myoung-shin, is tasked with helping creative professionals increase their business savvy as well.

“Our center’s goal is to help creators commercialize their content,” said Kang. “We support new content, not just one single genre but new hybrid ones,” Kang said.

Cultural creation and commercialization is not unfamiliar territory for the company that posts around 1.4 trillion won in annual sales.

“If anyone could establish and run the center, it would be us,” Kang said.

The CCCC’s model is based on a relatively novel convergence between CJ and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, serving as an accelerator for cultural content companies. In Korea, such companies are still small, and thus need a space where they can try and fail repeatedly until they can find a winning model.

The “creative economy” is one of the Park Geun-hye administration’s stated priorities, in which Korea, like other global economies, looks beyond large corporation-led economic growth and seeks more open innovation between companies, industries and sectors. The government has encouraged top companies to set up creative economy centers throughout the nation. For example, such centers have been opened by Samsung Group in areas including Daegu and by SK Group in Daejeon and Sejong City.

“Those centers are locally based, while our center, you can say, is a centralized effort to promote creative content,” Kang said.

To that end, the CCCC has various expert labs such as Sound Lab where indie bands can record and edit and Story Lab where filmmakers can do editing work. Sound Lab is so popular among musicians that the center plans to open a second one. Over 100 mentors helped 120 projects last year and 1,061 took part in 28 series last year, making porous the interaction between the center and creators.

“It’s a global trend. We need content creators and companies that are strong enough to compete commercially in domestic and overseas markets,” Kang said.

Last year, 19 companies were selected in the center’s first contest and received a combined 230 million won in prize money, as well as mentoring and marketing assistance.

“The Secret of SeungKyungDo: Rise to the Top” is a reinterpretation of a Joseon-era (1392-1910) game and the result of a six-month collaboration between the CCCC and venture company Nolgong last year. It takes place in a makeshift edifice that can house up to 200, where a player would log on with a tablet computer using near field communication (NFC) and receive a mission. Players are promoted every time they complete a mission. The game’s concept is similar to that of the popular program “Running Man” on SBS. “The Secret of SeungKyungDo: Rise to the Top” was demonstrated at the “Made in Korea” exhibition held in Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in Seoul earlier this month and is expected to run at the CCCC sometime in April or May.

Another collaborative work created at the CCCC was done with SangSangMaRu, known for creating the Korean musical “Cat Zorba,” and AIARA, an augmented reality (AR) gaming company. The two companies churned out a concept where characters from the musical would turn into 3D images via AIARA’s AR game Crayonpang when photographed on smartphones.

This year, the CCCC is recruiting its second batch of contestants through April 22.

CCCC’s challenges as content creation leader

Kang has narrowed down the center’s priorities for the rest of the year — formulating business models for content creators and helping them create products specifically for the Chinese market.

To achieve such tall orders, Kang and her team of 10 are constantly studying workable business models. CJ E&M has its own successful models that have not been documented, so the center’s task is to codify such models.

Kang, who holds a Ph.D. in communications and who taught from 1997 through 2003 at her alma mater Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and other colleges, is more than qualified to lead her team. But despite her academic yet engaging way of speaking, she doesn’t like teaching. For this reason, she decided to join a conglomerate.

“Women have a relatively better chance at success when they work at merit-based companies, where people are evaluated by quantitative outcomes.”

She added that as long as women are willing to work in an intense environment, they are likely to succeed.

“When the environment is intense, meaning that the pressure to produce results is strong, there is no need for biases,” Kang said. “You just have to be willing to work in such an intense environment.”

She used the words intense and perseverance often during the one-hour interview. She said perseverance was how she climbed to the executive level at CJ, one of the nation’s top 20 conglomerates.

“I worked persistently in human relations, as well as in tasks,” Kang said.

What is her success strategy?

“I would first proffer nine, in order to win that crucial one that I really need to earn or win,” Kang said. From this point, she spoke fervently about sharing her experience with other women.

“Women need to think more long term and be willing to offer first,’ she said, adding that she found some female workers tend to be selfish. “Women are (still) a minority,” she said.

When the minority group insists on pursuing only its self interests, Kang said it will have difficulty becoming a legitimate player in the game. Yielding first doesn’t mean that you’re insecure and narrow-minded, Kang said.

“I always like to stress ... ‘What is the point of winning mid-term, or holding on to your pride if you don’t win in the end?’” Kang said. “The one who wins at the end wins.”

She also advised women to be simple in their thinking and prioritize between quick and long-term decisions.

“I look at a situation and determine if it’s a three-minute decision or a long-term one,” she said. She either makes a decision in three minutes, or gives more time and thought to a long-term problem.

Kang is not afraid of failure.

“I face failure every day ... Every day, I fail, I lack something and I fall short,” Kang said. “But I try not to take it personally, because one can hide behind the hurt and not look objectively for the reasons behind the failure. You need a bold heart.”