Korea Forum: Across Futures

[Programme Highlights]

6pm Doors Open

6:30pm Opening

Sue Lee | Communications Manager, KCCUK

Special Remarks:

– Minister Siwoon Kim | Embassy of the Republic of Korea in the UK

– Anaïs Aguerre | Co-Founder, London Cultural Attaches Circle

6:40pm Panel Talk: K-Culture Unwrapped

– Speakers:

1) Dr. Seunghye Sun | Director, KCCUK
Seunghye Sun is a leading figure in the globalisation of Korean culture. She began her curatorial career at the National Museum of Korea and the Cleveland Museum of Art. She also served as Director for Cultural Exchange at Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and led the Daejeon Museum of Art. Her work bridges diplomacy, scholarship, and digital aesthetics to shape the future of cultural heritage.

K-Soft Power, Cultural Heritage, and Public Diplomacy
This presentation explores how K-soft power is developing beyond the global success of popular culture into a broader framework that connects cultural heritage, contemporary creativity, and public diplomacy. Drawing on experience in the UK, it argues that the strength of Korean culture lies not only in the appeal of its cultural content, but also in its capacity to bring together memory and innovation, tradition and technology, emotion and public value. At the heart of this discussion is a key idea in Korean aesthetics:“letting each unfold their own meaning”. This phrase suggests that the power of Korean culture lies not in uniformity, but in enabling different emotions, stories, and possibilities to emerge in harmony.

At a time when AI and digital transformation are reshaping the ways culture is created, interpreted, and shared, Korea is well placed to present a model in which heritage is understood not as a static legacy, but as a living resource for international dialogue and future-oriented collaboration. The presentation considers public diplomacy as a platform through which different sectors, institutions, and nations may cross futures together, and reflects on how Korea can help shape that next chapter through cultural imagination, openness, and shared purpose.

2) Prof. Youngjin Yoo | Professor, LSE Information Systems and Innovation
Youngjin Yoo is a prominent management scholar specializing in digital innovation at LSE, where he serves as the Academic Director of LSE Lifelong Learning Digital. He previously held academic positions in the US, including Case Western Reserve University and Temple University. His influential research on digital innovation is widely recognized, with publications in top academic journals.

K-wave & Korean Firms: The Role of Business in the Shaping of Culture
Business organizations occupy an undeniably important place in the shaping of contemporary culture through their creative work of introducing new products and services. These products and services do not merely provide utilitarian values, but directly shape contemporary society. Korean firms made an unmistakable contribution to the shaping of the K-wave through its world leading products from semiconductors, consumer electronics, skin care products and now industrialized kimchi.

Yet the K-wave is not just a story about products. What Korean firms and Korean culture export is not the look or feel of what they make, but the animating spirit behind it — the audacity of a nation that had no obvious claim to the world’s stage, yet claimed it nonetheless. Korea was, to the world, an inexplicable winner. Korean firms, represented by chaebols like Samsung and Hyundai, symbolize the incessant entrepreneurial spirit that provides textbook examples of Schumpeter’s gale of perennial creative destruction, and that represents the ethos of modern Korean culture. These firms provided critical leadership in shaping a positive, unabashedly growth-oriented entrepreneurial culture, building the technological, financial, and cultural infrastructures that made what followed possible, while providing affirmative proof to their own people and the rest of the world that seemingly insurmountable obstacles could be overcome. This is perhaps what Lee Kun-hee meant when he said "companies must sell philosophy and culture, not just products."

And it is what Kim Gu hoped for the nation that was still occupied by Japan, when he wrote that he did not wish for the most powerful nation, nor the wealthiest. “The only thing I want without limit,” he wrote, “is the power of a high culture.” Korea, through these remarkable accomplishments, became the living answer to that wish — a global symbol of what can be dreamed in the darkest of circumstances, and what can be built when a people refuses to stop believing it.

3) Diane Min | Head of CJ ENM European Content Sales
Diane Min oversees series, entertainment shows, and formats. She joined CJ ENM in 2010 and has led global format sales since 2015, closing over 90 global deals, including the hit format I Can See Your Voice, sold in more than 30 countries. Since 2025, she has been leading European content sales, working with major broadcasters and platforms across the region, including Amazon Prime Video, ITV, TF1, and M6.

The Rise of K-Drama
This session explores the global rise of K-Drama, tracing its journey from its cultural roots in Korea to its emergence as a major cultural force in the international arena. It will examine how K-Dramas have connected with audiences around the world and strengthened cultural exchange and soft power.

– Moderator:
Catalina Herrera Acuna, Co-Founder, London Cultural Attaches Circle