Hacker Cinema
Kim's Convenience
2016 · TV series · 22 min episodes · 5 seasons
Created by Kevin White, Ins Choi
The funny, heartfelt story of The Kims, a Korean-Canadian family, running a convenience store in downtown Toronto. Mr. and Mrs. Kim ('Appa' and 'Umma') immigrated to Toronto in the '80s to set up shop near Regent Park and had two kids, Jung and Janet who are now young adults. However, when Jung was 16, he and Appa had a major falling out involving a physical fight, stolen money and Jung leaving home. Father and son have been estranged since.
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2 comments on Hacker News
We're talking in a pop culture context here, where even just in 2020-2022 Korea and Korean culture/heritage has had significant soft power success in a number of markets/media:
- Export of majorly successful pop music (e.g. BTS, Blackpink - those hits are often penned by Western composers however, so a bit murky on what product is flowing there)
- Ditto TV (e.g. Squid Game setting TV records with a lot rooted in Korean schoolyard games)
- Ditto cinema (Parasite, a story about social mobility woes in Korean society, winning all the Oscars)
- Ditto gaming (PUBG, other MMOs)
- Ditto literature (bestellers including "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982", again on social issues in the country)
- Ditto cosmetics exports, beauty trends ("Korean Week" in malls, say), etc.
- Even some Western productions focussing specifically on Korean diaspora/ethnicity (e.g. most recently the expensive "Pachinko" on Apple TV+ (and the novel it's based on), or stuff like Kim's Convenience)
I think you can definitely make a case that Korea is the Asian-country-du-jour among the Western audience (and that's before you get into, say, Latin America, which is far deeper into Korean TV content, also bleeding over into Latin minorities in the USA).
Canada's national broadcaster (the CBC) is funded out of general tax revenue, which I appreciate. Extremists on both sides complain that it leans too far the other way, which is probably a good sign overall. Certainly the CBC coverage pulls no punches when discussing our famous Liberal government scandals.
Other than as a news organization, another part of why it exists is to purchase and stimulate the developments of home-grown content (Little Mosque on the Praire, Schitt's Creek, Kim's Convenience, etc). For this reason, it has sometimes raised eyebrows in the past when it has purchased licenses to air mainstream Hollywood films, especially if doing so competes against private broadcasters like CTV.