South Korea’s leading entertainment group CJ ENM has appointed Steve W. Chung as its global chief growth officer. He will be based in Los Angeles.
Previously, Chung served as chief growth officer at Fox Corporation. Prior to that Chung was the founder and CEO of Frankly, a publicly-traded media tech company based in San Francisco. He was also a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley and an executive producer in China.
Chung currently serves as a board member of the non-profit National Asia Pacific Center on Aging (NAPCA) and received his B.A from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.
Chung will be working together with all (related) divisions to create synergy for global growth — based on our company’s vision to position ENM as a global total entertainment company,” a CJ source told Variety. “At the same time, growth in the Americas will be one of many priorities that will be [Chung’s] focus, because of [CJ’s] market share and the scale of the market.”
The Korean corporation has long had a presence in the U.S. with film production and distribution operations in the country. Sister company CJ-CGV, which is one of the world’s largest cinema operators, also has a small cluster of mini-multiplexes in the U.S.
In recent years, propelled by Korean contemporary culture becoming a multinational phenomenon, CJ ENM has taken steps towards a more global span of operations. These have included taking a minority stake in David Ellison’s Skydance Media, buying majority control of Endeavor Content’s scripted division and allying itself with Viacom CBS.
In other recent stateside moves, CJ ENM has recently invested in U.S.-based Hyperreal, a purveyor of digital humans, revived the in-person K-pop convention KCON LA, and advanced development on feature movie “K-Pop: Lost in America,” which is being produced by JK Youn, Lynda Obst (“Interstellar”) and CJ ENM’s own California-based vice chair Miky Lee.