Lee Soo-man, Founder of K-pop, Meets Director Maggie Kang...The Power of Creative Collaboration Demonstrated by KPop Demon Hunters

To understand the history of K-pop and the success behind “KPop Demon Hunters,” attention must be paid to two key creators. They are Lee Soo-man, regarded as the founder of K-pop and founder of SM Entertainment (currently the key producer at A2O Entertainment), and Maggie Kang, a Korean-Canadian director. Lee Soo-man founded SM in 1995 and designed K-pop as an entire industry. He established a new K-pop business system where casting, training, marketing, and management operated as one unified entity, and he introduced the paradigms of “trainee system” and “idol group.” His concept of SMP (SM Music Performance) created a three-pronged system of music, choreography, and stage performance that defined the standard for SM’s idols. Lee Soo-man defined a producer’s role as one who does not merely work on music but creates a comprehensive art form encompassing dance, performance, and video. In terms of global strategy, he emphasized “localization,” exemplified by BoA’s entry into Japan, TVXQ!’s expansion in China, and SuperM’s launch in the United States. SM became the first entertainment company to list on the KOSDAQ market in March 2000. In an interview with Al Arabiya in 2022, he stated, “I was here even before Hallyu began, having been part of K-pop throughout its journey. Hallyu and K-pop are a history of innovation.” Lee Soo-man’s pursuit of innovation continued until just before his departure from SM in 2023. His final projects, the girl group aespa and the world-building SMCU (SM Culture Universe), aimed to shift focus toward virtual worlds. aespa functions as a “hybrid girl group blending the real world and virtual worlds,” with four members active in reality but expanding to an eight-member group when including avatar members in the metaverse. SMCU sought to expand into a vast universe by combining cartoons, animations, webtoons, motion graphics, avatars, and novels. Lee Soo-man aimed to grow K-pop into a comprehensive entertainment industry on par with the Marvel Universe, but after his departure, these experiments were not fully pursued within SM. Instead, those concepts came to fruition elsewhere. Director Maggie Kang’s “KPop Demon Hunters” realized the combination of storytelling and character content that Lee Soo-man had envisioned. Every aspect of the film—battle scenes on tiled roofs, settings in soup restaurants, and fan sign-ups—is saturated with Korean culture. Ironically, “KPop Demon Hunters” is not Korean content. Director Maggie Kang is Korean-Canadian, and the film was produced by the American studio Sony Pictures and financed and distributed by Netflix. In other words, it is an animation created from the perspective of a long-time K-pop fan and an outsider with roots in Korea. One columnist noted that there are “things that outsiders can do but insiders cannot,” raising questions about whether those involved in K-pop could have implemented ideas such as idols hunting demons or a group of evil spirits known as the Reapers. The columnist evaluated the film by saying, “There is nothing harder than objectifying oneself,” and added that “KPop Demon Hunters” is the result of creators’ sincerity, courage, and boldness. Lee Soo-man and Maggie Kang spoke as speakers at the JoongAng Ilbo’s 60th Anniversary “Global Media Conference” held at the Lotte Hotel in Seoul on the 17th and 18th, sharing their experiences and future strategies. It was a moment when the master who built the real-world industry and the creator who reinterpreted it through narrative and imagination met across generations on the same creative wave.