What Thailand Can Learn from the Director of KPop Demon Hunters

Maggie Kang grew up in Toronto feeling that being Korean was nothing to be proud of. Today, the film she wrote and directed, KPop Demon Hunters, is a worldwide phenomenon. On Wednesday, October 14, she gave Bangkok a clear message: stop trying to explain your culture to outsiders and tell the story that truly belongs to you.

Kang, a South Korean-Canadian storyboard artist, writer and director, closed CNN's Global Perspectives forum in Bangkok. The event, titled “The Stories That Shape Us” and moderated by CNN's Hanako Montgomery, opened with a short film about South Korea's rise from war and poverty to cultural powerhouse within a single generation.

Kang recalled that being Korean in Canada was not always easy, even among other Asian friends. She remembered feeling left out of her Chinese friends' Lunar New Year celebrations and admitted that she sometimes felt like an “inferior Asian,” which she called simply sad. Toronto's multicultural environment gave her the freedom to embrace her heritage even when few people around her shared it. Her parents did the rest, teaching her Korean history and a sense of pride, including how a small nation squeezed between Japan and China endured great suffering and still thrived. Understanding where her people came from, she said, helped her form a deeper bond with her culture.

Breaking into animation

Kang said she largely refused to explain her Asian identity to Western audiences, a freedom she credits to the people who paved the way. Korean film and television, led by the Oscar-winning Parasite, along with the global rise of K-pop, had already secured Korea's place in popular culture. “I grew up in a place where my culture wasn't considered cool, and now suddenly we are,” she said. “Maybe it's our turn to make something cool in animation.”

Korea had produced a great deal of animation for other studios but had never created something it could call its own. Kang was candid that this did not happen overnight. She spent more than ten years building relationships with producers and studio leaders and earning their trust before she was given her first chance to direct.

She thanked Netflix Animation for letting her direct, write and contribute music on her first feature as director, and for backing her insistence on an entirely Korean main cast. “If all that groundwork hadn't been laid before me,” she said, “I don't think a studio as major as Netflix Animation would have taken a chance like this.”

Pressure and self-doubt

The weight of expectation was heavy. Some of it came from Kang herself, and some from Korea, where many hoped the film would represent their culture well. Although she had never gone through a real identity crisis, she suddenly found herself wondering whether she was “Korean enough” to portray the culture however she chose.

The answer came from her father, who had first sparked her love of film by watching movies with her as a child. He told her that she could only make a film that reflected who she was. Leave the cultural checklist aside, he advised, and focus on what she wanted to say. Even her sister, who grew up in the same house, connects to Korean culture in her own distinct way, a realization that freed Kang to make the film she herself wanted to see.

The approach carried personal risk. Kang told her husband that if audiences rejected the film, she might not make another one, because filmmaking was all she had. The best reaction, she said, has come from friends who tell her the movie feels like her, on screen.

A film for her younger self

Kang, a mother of one daughter, said she did not set out to create role models. She described filmmaking as a deeply selfish process and said she made the movie for her younger self: a child, and later a teenage K-pop fan who rarely saw women like these on screen. “These are the women I wanted to see,” she said.

For years, she had told people in the industry that she would back any film about Korean culture and women like these. When none of them materialized, she decided to make one herself. She has announced a sequel but offered no details. Asked which artist she would like to work with, she said she wants to learn about music scenes around the world and mentioned her earlier conversations about Thai music.

What Thailand can take away

Kang's story carries a message for Thailand as it works to build its creative economy and grow its soft power, spanning food, film, music, festivals and folklore.

Korea did not succeed by reshaping itself for foreign tastes. Its growth came from a deep understanding of its own history, patient investment in storytellers and a willingness to let local voices lead. Kang's argument that specificity, rather than dilution, travels furthest should encourage Thai creators. Stories rooted in Thailand's traditions and everyday life can reach global audiences without being reshaped to fit someone else's idea of “universal.”

Her career also shows that such breakthroughs can take more than a decade of groundwork, supported by the trust of partners, platforms and institutions. For policymakers, studios and young artists alike, the lesson is to build the ecosystem, back first-time creators and give them room to be themselves.