JYP Entertainment founder and CEO Park Jin-young takes on a new role with a mission to promote South Korean pop culture worldwide.
On Sept. 9, the presidential office announced that South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has tapped Park to serve as co-chair of the newly established Presidential Commission on Pop-Culture Exchange, a ministerial-level committee tasked with promoting South Korean culture abroad while widening exposure to international pop culture domestically.
Presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik, in a briefing, described Park as one of the most “prominent” figures in K-pop, noting his role in bringing the genre to international audiences.
“Mr. Park has blazed the trail in exporting K-pop content to the United States, and now he has become a symbolic figure in the globalization of the K-pop industry,” Kang said, as quoted by The Straits Times.
In a statement shared on Instagram, Park acknowledged his hesitation about accepting a government role, saying it felt “burdensome and worrisome” for someone from the entertainment industry.
“I thought long and hard about taking on a government role, as it felt burdensome and worrisome in many ways for someone from the entertainment industry,” he wrote, as translated by Billboard. “But with K-pop facing such a special opportunity right now. I decided to embrace it and make the most of it.”
He pledged to push for practical government support for the industry, expand opportunities for younger artists, and strengthen K-pop’s role in fostering cultural exchange worldwide.
“While working on the field, I will work hard to organize the parts that I wish I had institutional support so that effective support can go, and I will work hard so that junior artists can get a lot of better opportunities,” Park stated.
“K-pop will take a step further and promote our culture, we will do our best to make it a platform for people around the world to understand and communicate with each other.”
Park debuted as a solo artist in 1994, previously celebrating 30 years in the industry with a solo concert in Seoul last year.
After founding JYP Entertainment in 1996, he launched some of Korea’s most iconic acts, including Rain, Wonder Girls, 2PM, TWICE, Day6, and Stray Kids, turning the company into one of the nation’s top entertainment agencies.
Reflecting on his long-standing mission, Park shared a 2009 photo of Wonder Girls—the first Korean act to enter the Billboard Hot 100 with “Nobody”—alongside a message: “My dream remains the same as it was in 2003 when I went to the U.S. to promote Korean artists to American record labels, in 2009 when the Wonder Girls became the first Korean act to enter the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and now: for K-pop to be loved worldwide.”
