Press Mentions

News mentions/interviews I’ve given:

Korean creed can soothe our troubled times (paywall)–The Times (UK), 14 August 2019

Why nunchi is the Korean wellness concept you need now–Evening Standard (UK), 13 August 2019

What you need to know about the Korean wellness concept ‘Nunchi‘ –Metro UK, 19 August 2019

Me being interviewed by Belgian Radio RTBF (in French), on 10 Feb. 2018. Listen here.

Me on “Opinion Journal” with Mary Kissell.

Samedis du Monde, Radio-Canada (Québec) radio interview (in French):
7/31 MSNBC, Ronan Farrow Daily / interview on North Korea / NATIONAL WATCH

8/8 Bloomberg-TV, Surveillance / live interview /WATCH


17 October 2014 , France 24 The Business Interview / FRANCE WATCH

17 January 2015  MSNBC, 30-minute panel on free speech / NATIONAL

BBC WORLD SERVICE / Business Matters / interview / UK, US Aug 2014

Fluter (Germany) Interview: Gelernt ist Gelernt 11 July 2016

INTERVIEW, RADIO: Rick Steves Travel 18 July 2015, rebroadcast 3 December 2016

MENTION by Boston Globe. Josh Kurlantzick “How to Market at Nation,”  11 November, 2015

​MENTION: Le Devoir (Quebec), Place à la diplomatie du kimchi 17 october 2015

Glamour, German edition, Aug 2015:

MENTION: “5 Asian/ Pacific-American Authors to Look Out For”–“If anyone can be said to embody the meaning of the term global citizen it would be Euny Hong.”

INTERVIEW: Calcalist (Israel)  המשרד לענייני קוּליות​ April 2016

MENTION: NPR. How The South Korean Government Made K-Pop A Thing 13 April 2015

8/18 Business News Network, The Street / interview for special on South Korea / CANADA, NTL
8/20 BBC, Picture This / interview in NYC’s Korea Town / US, CANADA

8/5 WPR, Central Time / interview / Wisconsin NPR
8/5 WNYC, Leonard Lopate / NYC NPR (will promote B&N event), 12:40 – 1:00pm
8/7 KERA, Think / Dallas NPR
8/7 KCRW, Press Play with Madeline Brand / interview on KCON / Los Angeles
8/8 WNYC + PRI, The Takeaway / 10-minute interview / NATIONAL (250 stations)
8/11 KPCC, AirTalk with Larry Mantle / Los Angeles NPR (will promote Book Soup event)
8/13 NHPR, Word of Mouth / New Hampshire NPR (taped 8/6)
8/19 CBC Radio’s Q with Jian Ghomeshi / interview on plastic surgery / Canada + US
Nov. KUOW / Travel with Rick Steves / Seattle NPR LISTEN
2015
4/13 NPR’s All Things Considered / interview on hallyu + Nickelodeon’s ‘Make it Pop’ / NATIONAL
PRINT
4/26 THE TIMES OF LONDON / original piece on ferry tragedy / UK
5/1 KIRKUS / review / NATIONAL (trade)
5/15 KIRKUS / interview in BEA issue ) / NATIONAL (trade)
6/5 NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS / mention in review of Chang-rae Lee’s ON SUCH A FULL SEA
6/11 KOREA TIMES US / mention (in Korean) / Los Angeles, CA (circ: 70,000)
6/15 LIBRARY JOURNAL / review / NATIONAL (trade)
July PACIFIC STANDARD MAGAZINE / review in July-August issue / Santa Barbara, CA (circ: 108,000)
July MACLEAN’S MAGAZINE / interview / Canadian weekly (circ: 313,000)
7/28 NEW YORK MAGAZINE / interviewed for cover story on cosmetic surgery / New York, NY
Aug KIRKUS / interview / NATIONAL (trade)
Aug MARIE CLAIRE / culture column by Hong / NATIONAL
Aug BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK / review by Brendan Greeley / NATIONAL (circ: 980,000)
8/3 THE NATIONAL POST / excerpt + jacket on front of the Weekend Post / Canada (circ: 117,800+)
8/3 THE NATIONAL POST / Business Section / interview / Canada (circ: 117,800+)
8/3 TORONTO STAR / interview with Jennifer Hunter / Toronto, Canada (circ: 361,000)
8/6 CHARLESTON CITY PAPER / Top 20 Must-Reads by Eric Liebetrau / Charleston, SC
8/7 THE TELEGRAPH / review by Helen Brown / UK
8/9 THE ECONOMIST / review + cover mention / NATIONAL
8/11 THE TIMES OF LONDON / review
8/13 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT / interview with Charlie Smith / Vancouver
8/22 JEWISH DAILY FORWARD / interview + photo on cover of paper / NATIONAL
8/15 NEWSWEEK EUROPE / original piece by Euny: The Ultimate National Marketing Ploy
8/15 KOREA TIMES US / interview by Tae Hong / NATIONAL (circ: 70,000)
8/17 NEWSDAY / review by Herman Wong / New York
8/18 THE INDEPENDENT / interview / UK
8/23 THE GUARDIAN / review by Isabel Hilton / UK
8/31 NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW / review by Mary H. K. Choi / NATIONAL
Sept KOREAM JOURNAL / interview for Aug.Sept issue / Los Angeles, CA (circ: 43,000)
Sept ASIAN FORTUNE / excerpt / Washington, DC (circ: 35,000)
Fall AUDREY / review in Asian American Lifestyle Mag / NATIONAL (circ: 10,000)
9/3 KOREA TIMES US / featured in op-ed by Andrew Salmon / NATIONAL (in English)
9/5 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY / 10 New Paperbacks / NATIONAL
9/5 THE WEEK / Book of the Week / NATIONAL
9/5 ADWEEK / featured in article on South Korea by Robert Mann / NATIONAL (circ: 45,000)
9/7 O ESTADO DE SAO PAULO / interview, cover of arts section / BRAZIL
9/10 DEMOCRAT & CHRONICLE / mention / Rochester, NY
9/28 SANTA CRUZ SENTINEL / mention / Santa Cruz, CA
10/23 DEMOCRAT & CHRONICLE / D&C’s Diversity Book Club pick for January / Rochester, NY
Fall A.ZINE Magazine / interview for 2nd issue of Korean publication (in English) / US, Korea
Sept. WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY / interview on K-Pop stars and Korean fashion / NATIONAL (circ: 63,000)
Oct. PASSPORT MAGAZINE / mention in feature on Seoul / NATIONAL
2015 CALCALIST / interview in Israeli business magazine / Israel
2015 L’ACTUALITÉ / Interview in Canadian news glossy mag (French) / Canada
TBD KOREA HERALD / coverage tk / South Korea
ONLINE
5/13 BLOG LOVIN’.com / review
5/24 PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER / mention by Tatin Yang “beautiful, hilarious and informative)
6/6 LIBRARY JOURNAL / featured in LJ’s Day of Dialog coverage
6/24 LIBRARY JOURNAL / Summer Begins, What We’re Reading feature
7/17 VISIT WEST HOLLYWOOD / Book Soup event listing
7/21 SEOUL USA.com / mention
7/23 BOOKISH.com / Best Book Club Picks for August
7/31 FLAVORWIRE / 10 Must-Read Books for August
7/31 KPOPSTARZ / feature on Kpop by Adrienne Stanley
Aug MARIE CLAIRE iPad issue / excerpt to supplement column by Hong (350 RTs)
8/1 ANGRY ASIAN MAN / Angry Reader of the Week, Q&A (31K followers)
8/1 ASIAN AMERICAN YALE ALUMNI NEWSLETTER / NYC B&N event featured in newsletter
8/1 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR / Amazon’s Best of the Month
8/1 KIRKUS / Coming Soon
8/1 HUFF POST LIVE / video teaser for Tuesday interview
8/2 DAEBAK KPOP / K Pop Starz article
8/3 BOOKFORUM / B&N event listing (NYC)
8/4 SHELF AWARENESS / Media Heat
8/4 POP MATTERS / great review by Has Rollman, 9 out of 10 (on Books homepage)
8/4 ASIAN AMERICAN JOURNALISTS ASSOCIATION / New York / interview + event listings
8/5 SACRAMENTO BEE / Pop Picks / Pop Matters review (McClatchy Tribune News Wire)
8/5 BELLINGHAM HERALD / Pop Picks / Pop Matters review (McClatchy Tribune News Wire)
8/5 AOL.com, Video / HuffPost LIVE interview segment on cosmetic surgery
8/5 HUFFINGTON POST LIVE / live video interview
8/5 BROOKLINE BOOKSMITH / Shelf-Talker, recommended by Jamie Tan
8/5 RED-HEADED MULE / review by Clarence Riley
8/5 REFINERY 29 / interview with Jinnie Lee
8/5 VICE’s Motherboard vertical / interview on K-Dramas
8/5 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT.org / Financial Post piece
8/6 WALL STREET JOURNAL.com / Opinion Journal with Mary Kissel, video interview
8/6 LEMONWADE / brief review
8/6 AV CLUB / mention in Notable August Releases
8/6 PARIS REVIEW DAILY / excerpt
8/6 PALM BEACH POST / WSJ video
8/6 AUSTIN AMERICAN STATESMAN / WSJ video
8/6 GRANTLAND / August Book Recommendations by Kevin Nguyen
8/6 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, Must List YouTube series / recommended WATCH
8/6 HUFFINGTON POST / piece on HuffPost LIVE video
8/7 ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION / WSJ video
8/7 SEOUL EATS / piece by Daniel Gray + link to Bloomberg review
8/7 ASIAN AMERICAN JOURNAL / link to Telegraph review
8/8 BUSINESS INSIDER / Economist review
8/8 CNN.com / featured in piece on KCON, Korean trends by Jeff Yang (1,000+ comments in 2 days)
8/8 BOSWELL BOOK COMPANY blog (Milwaukee) / mentioned WPR interview
8/9 AS AM NEWS / piece on CNN.com opinion
8/11 THE RUMPUS, Los Angeles / Notable events
8/11 OMAHA SUN-TIMES / piece on Hong’s Huffington Post LIVE interview
8/11 DO LA / event listing
8/11 HUFFINGTON POST Impact / HuffPost LIVE video clip on cosmetic surgery
8/12 KIRKUS REVIEWS / 9 Books Everyone is Talking About
8/12 HUFFINGTON POST / Kirkus’s 9 Books Everyone is Talking About
8/12 NBC.com / video interview on K-Pop at KCON
8/13 INSIDE KOREA / Economist review
8/15 KPOP ME / featured in KCON write-up
8/16 CULT OF MAC / Pick of the week
8/19 I AM KOREAM / Facebook giveaway (18,000+ likes)
8/19 BRAD BOGNER SHOW podcast / interview
8/19 CBC’s Q / blog post
8/20 KINDLE DAILY POST / 500 words on Korean etiquette
8/20 MACMILLAN’S TO THE POINT newsletter / Q&A with Anna deVries
8/21 RAINCOAST BOOKS (Canada) / Tumblr post, Kindle Daily
8/22 NEW YORK MAGAZINE / VULTURE / Last-Chance Beach Reads: 12 Books by Jen Doll
8/29 KDRAMA STARZ / piece on K-Drama by Adrienne Stanley
8/31 NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW PODCAST / interview with Pamela Paul
Aug BEYOND HALLYU / review
Sept The Bryan Callen podcast / 1-hour interview / NATIONAL
9/9 MEDIUM / review by Rose Garg
9/9 INDEPENDENT / featured in article on Korea / Newfoundland
9/10 AUDREY / Must-Read of the Week
9/14 SMELLS LIKE HUMAN SPIRIT PODCAST / interview with Guy Evans
9/16 PSYCHOLOGY TODAY / mention in piece on eating disorders
10/23 10 MAG / review
11/4 TABLET MAGAZINE / interview on Koreans and Jews
11/24 I AM KOREAM / mention in article on K-Drama
1/9 POP MATTERS / Best Books of 2014
2/3 CENTER FOR GLOBAL AWARENESS / mention
TBD PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER / online interview with Euny Hong by Tatin Yang
TBD GIANT ROBOT / review by Michelle Borok
EVENTS
Aug 2015: University of Hawaii
8/5 New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Upper East Side / Talk, Q&A, Signing, 7:00pm
8/9 Los Angeles, CA: KCON 2014 / Korean language and Korean culture panels + signing
8/11 Los Angeles, CA: Book Soup / Talk, Q&A, Signing, 7:00 PM (5 people; 5 books)
10/15 New York, NY: Korea Society / In Conversation, Q&A, Signing, 6:30pm WATCH
10/17 San Francisco, CA: Network of Korean-American Leaders Summit / Keynote speaker, Gala, Signing
11/8 New York, NY: New York Asian Film Festival / Panel on Cold Eyes film
11/11 Cambridge, MA: Harvard / lecture
11/17 Boston, MA: Boston College / Distinguished Lecture Series, 7:15pm / books sold by BC
2015
2/2 Boston, MA: Boston College / International Entrepreneurship course, 7:00PM / Talk, Q&A
3/15 Austin, TX: SXSW Interactive Festival / Talk, 10:30 – 10:50 AM
4/15 New Haven, CT: Yale / Talk, Q&A, Signing 5:00 PM
Praise for Euny Hong and The Birth of Korean Cool
“If you’re not fascinated by Korea yet, you damn well should be. The most innovative country on earth deserves a hilarious and poignant account on the order of Euny Hong’s The Birth of Korean Cool. Her phat beats got Gangam Style and then some.”
—Gary Shteyngart
“Full of insight and shocking facts, The Birth Of Korean Cool is a hilarious, gutsy, eye-opening account of Korean drive and success. I couldn’t put it down. Euny Hong is a force of nature.”
—Amy Chua, Yale Law Professor and author of The Triple Package and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
“‘Gangnam Syle’ was just the tip of the iceberg. Hong shows how, in just a few decades, South Korea has become a cutting-edge pop powerhouse.”
—Tina Jordan & Stephan Lee, Entertainment Weekly
“An insightful book…[Hong’s] brief chapter on Korea’s han against Japan is both the best and most concise explanation I’ve read of the two countries’ complicated and ancient feud.”
—Brendan Greeley, Bloomberg Businessweek
“A funny, iconoclastic Korean-American journalist and author turns her skewering lens on her own culture….Hong gives a thoughtful, self-deprecating and sly ….A pleasing mix of Margaret Cho, Sarah Vowell and a pinch of Cory Doctorow.”
—Kirkus Reviews (review)
“The rare book that’s hilariously funny and also makes you smarter about world economies.”
—Jen Doll, NYMag.com’s Vulture
“Hong is a funny and uber-snarky observer and is as clever as clever can be. This is essentially a book of linked essays that goes down easy and is often laugh-out-loud funny and as spicy and memorable as the best homemade kimchi.”
—Barbara Genco, LibraryJournal.com
“A kind of memoir of a culture as well as of an individual life, Hong’s first nonfiction book mixes personal memoir with interviews and research to produce a rollicking, delightful, wise-guy story of how both she and her ancestral home became the cultural icons they are today.”
—Sara Nelson, An Amazon Best Book of the Month, August 2014
“Euny Hong’s new book The Birth of Korean Cool is a sparkling gem that falls into the must-read category… engaging, easy to read and occasionally humorous and light-hearted, it’s also a fact-filled investigative study…a superb overview of the Korean pop culture phenomenon…a satisfying and thought-provoking book by a first-rate journalist whose style is irresistible and informative all at once.”
—Hans Rollman, Pop Matters – 9 out of 10
“Highly entertaining.”
—Isabel Hilton, The Guardian (UK)
“This fascinating read is an essential for anyone obsessed with South Korea’s fast-track to pop-culture dominance.”
—Jinnie Lee, Refinery29
“In her first book of nonfiction, Korean-American journalist Euny Hong playfully and insightfully dissects her native culture…there’s much more to it than just ‘Gangnam Style.’”
—Eric Liebetrau, Charleston City Paper
“The Birth of Korean Cool is very funny and combines Hong’s remembrances of growing up in the poor and fragmented post-war state with her sharp observations on the cultural changes that created this behemoth of an industry…. It’s Hong’s voice, a funny, smart, often conflicted and witty combination of personal essay and observational journalism, which makes the book unique.”
—Clayton Moore, Kirkus Reviews (interview)
“Fabulously snarky…Hong is perfectly positioned to understand this complex Korean psyche while retaining enough distance (and cynicism) to evaluate it.”
—Helen Brown, The Telegraph (UK)
“Persuasive…amusing…Hong’s breezy book is a good place to begin to understand this rising nation.”
—The Times of London (UK)
“Being both an outsider and an insider, Hong is the perfect guide to explain South Korean culture.”
—Jennifer Hunter, Toronto Star
“A witty chronicle of how pop culture shaped South Korea’s meteoric rise from a war-torn nation to a technological giant.”
—Seth Berkman, The Forward
“Incisive and humorous…an excellent case study of calculated entrepreneurial moxie.”
— Mary H.K. Choi, New York Times Book Review
“Through an interesting and often funny analysis of corporal punishment in Korean schools, Confucian ideals, that very Korean concept of han and the birth of irony (epitomized by Psy’s hit son), Hong makes the case for a perfect storm of circumstances—along with not an insignificant boost from the government—that eventually led to Korea’s rise.”
—Audrey Magazine
“It doesn’t stop with “Gangnam Style.” Not even close. American popular culture is full of South Korean imports, and Euny Hong tackles this phenomenon in her quippy volume, The Birth of Korean Cool…Meme-fluent and internet culture-savvy, this work of nonfiction sheds light on a significant cultural force and the ways in which ideas and aesthetics can travel from one place and group of people to another. From K-pop to video games, Hong takes the reader on a fascinating journey. If your book club is yearning to mix things up a little bit, we’d highly recommend this accessible and relevant nonfiction read.”
—Bookish.com, Best Book Club Picks for August