[A screenshot image captured from CJ E&M website]
South Korea's top entertainment and media contents company, CJ E&M, is making an aggressive foray into Southeast Asia as exports of K-pop contents or Hallyu (Korean culture wave) suffered a heavy blow due to China's retaliation over the deployment of a US missile shield.
In January, CJ E&M opened "tvN Movies", a TV station in Singapore, to air Korean movies in partnership with paid-subscription network and telecom operator StarHub. The company said Monday it would open a "tvN Movies" channel in Malaysia this month through its local IPTV platform "HyppTV".
In Vietnam, the company plans to open "TV Blue", a Hallyu channel that will launch its full service in June. In Hong Kong, CJ will start a Hallyu service on the over-the-top platform "myTV SUPER".
CJ E&M has been the key distributor and exporter of Hallyu in Asia, which accounted for 78 percent of South Korea's total movie sales estimated at 29.37 million US dollars in 2015.
In 2015, the company set up "tvN Asia", a Hong Kong-based entertainment channel targeting K-pop fans in Southeast Asia. In March last year, it set up a joint cinema venture with Thailand's largest cinema chain Major Cineplex.
Anti-Seoul sentiment is rampant in China over the installation of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea. Along with invisible trade retaliation, Chinese state regulators have issued oral guidelines to ban the distribution of K-pop contents.
Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
