In all honesty, I was not sure what to expect from my internship at CJ 4DPLEX; a strange combination of events meant that I was not introduced to any members of my team until less than a week before I joined the team. Because of those same confluence of events, I also had no idea what would be expected of me. I was told that I was the first intern this team had ever had, and, for a while, it showed. I’m not convinced that they knew what to do with me and I kept surprising them anytime I’d finish something quickly.

The first day at work I didn’t move from my seat because I was...

I vividly remember the first time I considered applying for the internship at CJ ENM and all the questions and concerns that others would voice to me as soon as I mentioned the possibility. I was a junior who had never delved into the entertainment or business industries and whose activities and classes solely reflected a trajectory in pre-medicine and psychology. My background and interests always led to the same questions from myself and others: Why CJ ENM? Aren’t you pre-med? Shouldn’t you be doing research for the summer? Why are you suddenly interested in marketing and entertainment...

Going to Korea having read more than a few million printed words about the country was truly a journey bringing imagined foregone reality in constant clash with an excitingly energizing present. Such an experience on a personal level is perhaps comparable to a K-pop fan’s pilgrimage to Korea, “knowing” the country only too well through watching those hundreds of hours of K-drama and pop music videos. My first extended visit to Korea could have left me with much post-hyper-energy fatigue and disorientation due to the rich mental clashes between the imagined and the real. But thanks to the...

This summer, I spent a little over two months conducting fieldwork on South Korean beauty standards and its association with the rise in body dysmorphia and plastic surgery in South Korea, particularly among young women. I dedicated this summer to conducting key informant interviews with twelve South Korean women, all aged 18-28 and who lived in or around Seoul. My main aims of these key informant interviews were to better understand what kinds of pressures – if any exist at all – young women experience regarding their physical appearance, from where they receive such pressures to be “...