Journalists love to get Korea wrong. Some are paid to share explosive takes that feed into the subsconscoius orientalist views of the wider world; others just do it for the social media clout.

There is a weird sensation that comes from watching someone deliver a sociological autopsy of a nation in a 14-minute YouTube video essay.

Korea is currently occupying this weird hyper-visible cultural sweet spot where it is simultaneously a global entertainment superpower and, at the same time, a distant canvas for Western anxieties.

Historically, this Western "dystopian" template was first aimed at Japan. Back in the late 80s and 90s, when the American imagination was absolutely terrified of Tokyo buying up Manhattan, Japan was the original blade-runner-esque, soul-crushing corporate hive-mind.