The King Of K-Pop’ Explores Origins Of K-Pop Culture

Lee Soo Man created many of k-pop’s most iconic bands. Ting Poo was not a k-pop fan when she first considered making a documentary about k-pop visionary Lee Soo-man. But then her documentary, Lee Soo Man, The King of K-Pop is not just about the inventive pop music that quickly gained a worldwide following. It’s also the story of Korea’s economic miracle, the soft power of pop culture and the continued reinvention of culture by emerging technology, seen through the lens of one of k-pop’s primary architects. “I actually saw it as an opportunity to delve into this world,” said Poo. “It has had such an impact globally on pop culture and I think there’s just a fascination with it, myself included, but I didn’t have deep knowledge of it and I wasn’t a diehard fan.” The director is known for her documentaries of actor Val Kilmer and Christina Aguilera, as well as editing the Academy Award-winning short Heaven Is A Traffic Jam On The 405 . If you want to explore k-pop, she reasoned, there is perhaps no one better to focus on than Lee, the business executive and record producer who founded the multinational entertainment company SM Entertainment in 1989. Considered one of the pioneers of the Hallyu or Korean Wave, he debuted as a singer in 1971 while studying at Seoul National University. In the 80s he decided to study computer engineering in California and witnessed the rise of MTV. When he returned to Korea, his unique background in music and engineering led to the creation of many of the nation’s most beloved k-pop acts, thereby shaping the entire industry. “He was so instrumental in the creation of it and creating the architecture by which it’s made that it was an opportunity to really delve back and see the genesis of the genre,” said Poo. The intense training system that k-pop groups undergo—that was Lee’s idea. After promoting a singer, whose poorly thought out private life almost ruined his company, Lee created a system where he would sequester talent, train them, and make sure they presented a clean public image. In the documentary Lee looks back on his successes and the failures it took to get to success. “He learned a hard lesson from that,” said Poo. “For a lot of people that would’ve been a time to quit and be like, this is not going to work. He realized that the character of these people is just as important as the music that they’re creating, that those kinds of controversies can be avoided, and he really built the system around that.” Creating groups with many members was also an idea Lee championed. The universe that some k-pop groups live in—complete with a back story and even avatars—was another idea that Lee promoted. He created some of k-pop’s most memorable groups—H.O.T., Girls Generation, TVXQ, EXO, Super Junior, NCT 127 and Aespa—during a time in South Korean history that saw political upheaval but also unprecedented national growth. Lee saw k-pop as a cultural export that could further interest the world in Korean culture and products—and it has. The director had many storylines to incorporate in her documentary. “There’s this personal story, his career story, and then there’s this larger story of Korea, and those three things are really interwoven,” said Poo. “So it’s more or less chronological, but the challenge was in finding the way to weave all those things together because they were all very much dependent on each other. His journey goes side by side and is completely interwoven with the journey of Korea from after the Korean War up to the cultural powerhouse that it is now. There were very specific things that happened within that country that coincided with him trying to create this industry.” Poo loves music and sees it as a powerful and far-reaching medium that crosses cultural boundaries. “A lot of art does and film does,” said Poo. “But music does in its own special way. I’m always fascinated by artists themselves, what translates from their life into the music, what is being expressed that is kind of universal, is able to cross those boundaries. And for Lee Soo man, a lot of his inspiration came from watching MTV and cultivating the world of k-pop around this visual medium. It’s not just the music, it’s the artistry, the choreography, the filmmaking around it. His music in particular is like a multidisciplinary art form.” For those new to k-pop, just listening to k-pop is not enough. It’s a very visual medium. “You have to see it,” said Poo. “And then there’s also worlds that are created around these bands. When idols are made, they have personalities and there’s individuals that you can connect to. There’s also mythology that he built around them, which you see, which is its world creation. So it’s really fascinating.” The documentary includes videos by several of Lee’s SM artists. There were a lot of videos to consider. “They’ve created so many groups and amazing groups with huge fan bases, so it was difficult to choose,” said Poo. “We decided to lean into the groups that represented a strategic shift in what he was trying to do, pillars that marked a new strategy, a new pathway. So H.O.T. was obviously the first boy group that was designed not just to be huge in Korea, but to go to China. BOA was learning Japanese to expand her reach into Japan. Super Junior was his first foray into the super group to have many people with many talents, and then obviously the world building and the mythology with EXO.” Promoting an artist that almost tanked his company was not the only setback that Lee faced. Members of one of SM’s biggest groups TVXQ sued to get out of their contracts and went their own way. The deaths of two SM stars broke many hearts. SM singer-songwriter and SHINee member Jonghyun committed suicide in 2017 at the age of 27. SM singer and actress Sulli took her life at the age of 25. The documentary touches on the conflict with TVXQ members, as well as the deaths of these beloved performers. It also relates the story of how Lee was ultimately forced out of SM by his nephew, which led Lee to form an investment company, Blooming Grace, and a new entertainment agency, A20 Entertainment. The director wanted to include all sides of Lee’s story. “He understood why it was important to include and I just gave him the space to talk about it,” said Poo. “There were no questions that were off limits. All of those things are a part of his story, and I made it clear that his life wasn’t just success after success after success. There were a lot of tragedies, there were a lot of difficult things that happened. The death of Jonghyun was something that greatly impacted him as an individual, SM as a family and the entire community. It was a huge tragedy that everybody went through and to not include that would just seem wrong.” Despite his many setbacks, Lee continued to pursue his vision for k-pop. “It is a story of determination and persistence and really having a vision and a dream and sticking to that dream and being able to pivot too,” said Poo. Surreal documentary scenes where Lee speaks against a virtual background were part of the director’s vision from the beginning. “Those scenes are meant to represent his imagination, they’re internalized dream sequences,” said Poo. “The audio is lifted from our interviews, but there are more thoughts that reflect his creative imagination and his own hopes and dreams. I really wanted to take the opportunity to create something that was more dreamlike and did more artistic justice to these very deep thoughts that he conveyed to me in our interviews.’ In the documentary Lee describes k-pop as being successful because it’s like bibimbap, a delicious Korean dish that combines various ingredients. His director agrees. “Because it is world music,” said Poo. “He collaborates with producers and talents from across the world, across genres, and mixes it all to his aesthetic. It incorporates our own library of sounds and things we love. He has a vast knowledge of music, so I think that with his engineer brain he has scientifically put these things together in a way that people will love and that brings joy. He has got this down to a science.” Lee Soo Man: King of K-Pop airs on Prime on May 13. Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joanmacdonald/2025/05/08/lee-soo-man-the-king-of-k-pop-explores-origins-of-k-pop-culture/