EP16 - Sid & Han: the last stage of the K wave

No guest this week. Just Sid and Han on the Korean wave - where it came from, and why they think K-food is the last piece to fall. Han has spent his career advising K-pop companies, starting with a JYP internship in 2009 when the Wonder Girls were selling their own CDs at the merch table. He has a theory about why BTS broke globally that has nothing to do with the music. Sid comes at it from food, and he has a number that reframes the whole thing. America has around 85,000 Mexican restaurants. Guess how many Korean ones. Millions of people now know what gimbap is, but not everyone can buy it. We also get into trainees as athletes, what it actually costs to break a group, virtual idols, and the ambitious project Sid is trying to launch right now... here on the Drink of Choice. Drink of Choice is a long-form interview podcast hosted by restaurateur Sid Kim and entertainment lawyer Han Kim. Every guest arrives with a drink that means something to them, and that drink becomes the doorway into a much larger conversation. Built around Asian and Asian-American voices that don't always get a seat at the table, Drink of Choice is intimate, unhurried, and long overdue. 0:00 – No Guest Today: Our Guest Is Each Other 1:06 – Han's Drink of Choice: Brawley Cabernet Sauvignon 3:11 – The Stages of the K-Wave: Drama, Pop, Beauty, Food 6:50 – Advising K-Pop Companies: JYP, the Wonder Girls and the Jonas Brothers 9:48 – Why BTS Broke Globally: The Social Media Theory 11:24 – K-Pop Artists as Athletes, Companies as Team Managers 14:20 – Vatos in 2011: Sid's Own Perfect Storm 18:32 – Parasite, Netflix and Squid Game 22:39 – A Guy in Arkansas Doing the Saja Boys Dance 26:59 – Why Everyone Thinks Korean Food Means Barbecue 28:37 – 85,000 Mexican Restaurants. 5,000 Korean Ones. 31:56 – Son Mat and Why Korean Food Is So Hard to Scale 36:19 – Assembling the Chefs and Building a Korean Eataly 42:21 – Appreciation vs. Appropriation in Korean Food 48:17 – XG, Katseye and K-Pop Without Koreans 52:48 – Nature vs. Nurture: The Psyche Behind the Training System 1:00:06 – What It Costs to Break a K-Pop Group 1:08:39 – Virtual Idols and Han's Next Project 1:11:07 – Woori Nara: How Korea Stopped Thinking Small