Motion Picture Association Asia-Pacific chief Urmila Venugopalan on how Korea became case study every government wants to copy, what the market is telling Seoul, and why her daughters won't stop singing in Korean
The Motion Picture Association has been telling governments the story of Hollywood for a century. This week in Seoul, it is doing the opposite: telling the story of Korean content, in numbers.
On Tuesday, the trade body's Korea arm presented its first report on the economic footprint of Korean film, television and streaming at a seminar held at the National Assembly. The study, commissioned from Oxford Economics, put the country's audiovisual industry at roughly 300,000 jobs supported and close to 2 trillion won ($1.35 billion) in exports in 2024 — numbers meant to frame a wider debate over where the industry goes from here as the world's appetite for Korean content keeps growing.
A day before the event, Urmila Venugopalan, the MPA's president and managing director for Asia-Pacific, sat down with The Korea Herald at its headquarters in Yongsan-gu, central Seoul, for a wide-ranging conversation on Korea's content industry, the policy debates surrounding it, and the soft-power phenomenon that has reshaped how the country is seen abroad.
Based in Tokyo, Venugopalan leads the region-wide arm of the organization that represents the major Hollywood studios and streamers — Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros. Discovery, and, as of this year, Amazon MGM Studios and Prime Video — on matters of market access, policy advocacy and industry growth across the Asia-Pacific region.
Before joining the MPA in 2017, Venugopalan served in the US Obama administration as a senior adviser on then-Secretary of State John Kerry's policy planning staff, leading work on trade, investment and development.
An edited version of the conversation follows.
Q. For readers who know the MPA only from coverage of the big Hollywood studios, what does the organization actually do in this region?
A. The MPA is the leading global voice for the film, television and streaming industry, but the day-to-day work in Asia-Pacific is very local. Our studios are deeply invested in Korean stories and continue to invest here, so we work hand in hand with local creators, producers and distributors to grow a healthy screen ecosystem.
That means helping filmmakers and crews reach audiences worldwide, attracting production and post-production investment, and partnering with governments to protect the creative ecosystem — which, in practice, means fighting digital piracy through our coalition ACE, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment.
Q. What do you think makes Korea's content industry distinctive, compared with the rest of the Asia-Pacificregion?
A. What makes the Korean content sector so distinctive is that it is truly a critical component of the country's economic and industrial strategy, and it's been the case for decades. Over the past 20 or 30 years, you've had purposeful government decisions and purposeful policy choices: to open the market, to welcome foreign investment, to welcome collaboration with global platforms like our member companies. And underpinning all of that is a policy choice to protect copyright.
Those very purposeful policy choices, over a long period of time, turned a vibrant, creative economy into a serious export regime. Exports of Korean film and television were worth almost 2 trillion won in 2024. Korean content is now the single biggest driver of inbound tourism, cited by four out of 10 visitors coming to Korea.
When I look at this market — and I always love being here — Korean culture, the Korean creative economy, it's not just celebrated the way it is in other markets. It is systematically cultivated by the policy environment, and systematically projected through this kind of openness and collaboration that we've seen over decades. That's why you're seeing creativity show up in the trade figures as much as you're seeing it on the screen.
Q. You represent a wide range of entities — legacy studios, streamers, local affiliates — whose interests don't always line up, and across very different markets. How do you reconcile competing priorities?
A. No two markets in this region are the same, and we don't approach the region with a single template. Our member companies are also very diverse businesses. Many have vibrant theatrical arms, streaming arms and news divisions all under one roof.
So we don't look at the industry as streaming versus theatrical, and our job isn't to decide which business model wins. It's to help shape a policy environment that grows the number of films and television shows audiences can discover and connect with.
Q. Korea's film industry has had a rough stretch in recent years, with audiences slow to return to multiplexes after the pandemic and big-budget titles consistently underperforming. The government has been unusually active in trying to pull it out of the slump — budget increases, ticket discount coupons and direct interventions to shore up the business. Where does intervention on that scale sit with the MPA?
A. Some of the incentive efforts can be helpful in the near term. But ultimately, theatrical recovery is not something that can be engineered or legislated from the top down. It is driven by audience demand, and that in turn is driven by the strength of the films themselves and their ability to compete in what is essentially a very fragmented attention economy.
Government plays a critical role, but not to replace market forces. Its role, which Korean policymakers have played successfully for decades, is to create the conditions in which the industry can work effectively through a stable, predictable policy environment.
That matters especially here because our business is built on creative risk-taking. The job of policymakers is to sustain confidence — from investors, from producers, and from audiences that there will be films worth seeing on all types of screens.
When I look at the first quarter of this year, it's encouraging. "The King's Warden" surpassed 16 million admissions, well past the 10 million benchmark for a mega-hit here, and there were a couple of other ones that did really well, too.
Comparing Q1 2024 to Q1 2026, domestic admissions have climbed from 21.3 million to nearly 29 million — over 20 percent. Recovery has been slower here than in some peer markets, but it's underway.
Q. On to one of the more hotly contested debates right now: South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has also floated a mandatory waiting period before theatrical films can move to streaming, and two bills on it are pending in the National Assembly. Where does the MPA land?
A. The MPA believes government-mandated waiting periods are the wrong tool for supporting a healthy theatrical ecosystem. And it's not just us. The Korean Film Council released a study just last week finding that legislating a six-month window doesn't meaningfully boost theater attendance and actually hurts independent films.
What we've seen in other markets is that recovery depends on flexibility — the ability of studios to choose release strategies based on the title, the genre and, most importantly, audience demand.
The lessons from Europe are pretty consistent: Rigid, mandated release windows discourage investment, delay releases and push viewers toward piracy. Most theatrical viewing happens in the first few weeks, regardless. Mandating a longer wait doesn't change that behavior; it delays legal access after demand has peaked, and consumers don't like to wait.
Spain is a good example. Its government eventually recognized that long gaps between theatrical and home release didn't drive more people to cinemas. It just opened up space for piracy.
Q. Korean cultural exports have become a genuine soft-power engine. How far do they reshape the way the country is seen abroad?
A. Everywhere I travel in this part of the world — and Asia-Pacific has some of the fastest-growing audiovisual industries globally — every government official I speak to asks the same thing: What has the Korean government done to make its audiovisual industry not just a cultural export, but a strategic engine for cultural exports and economic growth? Everyone looks to the Korean example. Policymakers, government officials, regulators — all trying to understand the secret to this country's creative economy.
What I find fascinating is that 4 in 10 foreign visitors coming to Korea have chosen to come because of K-content — music, film, TV. The world is engaging with Korea, understanding Korea, and its first introduction to the country is through film, TV and entertainment. That strengthens national identity and strengthens soft power.
In this day and age, to have people from Mumbai to Maputo to London all with some kind of K-content story — that kind of soft-power projection is quite amazing. It's a very powerful foreign-policy tool, a very powerful economic tool, and a very powerful cultural tool all at once.
Q. Any favorites of your own?
A. "Parasite," obviously. "Moving," "Extraordinary Attorney Woo" are my favorites too, also "Marry My Husband." I have two little girls, and in our house, the favorite is "KPop Demon Hunters."
All of their friends — none of them Korean — are constantly singing Korean songs at home. They have no idea what they're singing. There's just this constant desire to embrace the culture. To see a culture really transcend geographical boundaries like that — that's quite powerful.
moonkihoon@heraldcorp.com
