We're watching Minyoung Kim, Netflix's VP of Content for Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, because... she has a mega-budget for Asian content (US$500 million for Korea alone), outsize pressure to deliver bigger, better and best Korean content, and a new remit that expands her reign over Korea to Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Korea already seems like a slam dunk, with successes like the US$27 million apocalyptic horror series, “Sweet Home” (22 million homes watched from debut in Dec 2020), and the expansion into new genres such as sitcom.

Now we’re watching for the next iteration of the Southeast Asia business, and what happens once Disney+ (having just dipped its toes in Korean rights’ waters) gets serious about Korean originals.

Netflix originals developed under her watch include “Kingdom”, “Busted!”, “My First First Love”, “Love Alarm”, “My Holo Love”, “Extracurricular” and “The School Nurse Files”, along with contribution to “ Crash Landing on you” and “Itaewon Class”.

Currently based in Seoul, Kim says her life’s strongest drivers have always been curiosity and having fun.

“I have always enjoyed learning more about what happens around the world, and broadening my perspectives,” she says.

She describes herself as an “active (almost aggressive) consumer of all types of content since childhood - from "TV and film to theatrical plays and musicals and all types of music”.

Kim’s career so far includes stints at an indieproduction house in Korea and NBCUniversal France, before she joined Korean conglomerate CJ E&M, and then moved to Twitter in a bid to learn about digital/tech. She was Netflix’s first local Korean hire in November 2016, when she joined the team in Singapore. She relocated to Seoul in July 2018 to open up the Seoul office as a content hub.

Kim’s fun these days is “finding the best stories from Korea”.

What would you like people to say about you when you are not in the room?

“I want to be someone who is fun to work with. Someone who can help turn complicated issues into something simple and fun. I am a strong believer that great results can only come out of a process that everyone enjoys together. After all, we are in the entertainment business and our goal is to spark joy for our viewers. And if we are not having fun ourselves, how can we deliver joy for our members?”

Are you now where you thought you would be when you were 20?

“First of all, the concept of entertainment streaming service like Netflix didn’t exist when I was 20! I was a food and nutrition major in college and I had been obsessed with working at an emergency response team at an NGO. But I guess life is fun because you don’t know where it’s going.

“For my business school essay, I started the paragraph by describing a day of someone I envisioned as myself in 10 years. What I had described was a day of someone who works as an executive producer/commissioner. A woman who starts her day at the office reading scripts, meeting filmmakers and storytellers. She finishes her day by signing with a young, up and coming storyteller who had written a one-of-a-kind, never-seen-before script.

"I had forgotten about the essay. But a couple of years ago, the essay popped up in my head. It’s quite surprising that what I am doing now at Netflix every day is pretty similar to the day I had described then. Of course, we all know that the reality is a bit less sexy but it’s a lot more exciting than I had imagined.

"What I had not imagined then was what’s beyond just having fun. That I would be working with Korea’s most talented storytellers, creating exciting content, and helping the world’s audiences of different cultures and tastes to discover K-content.”