Wonwoo Park is the original creator of The Masked Singer, one of the most widely exported television formats of the past decade. Since entering the industry in 1997, he has built a career that spans nearly three decades, working with Korean broadcasters including MBC and international partners such as Fox TV and NBC. His company, dI turn, operates as one of the few genuinely team-based production companies in Korea’s otherwise highly individualistic production landscape. Park’s experience offers a rare inside view of how format innovation emerges from an ecosystem that, structurally speaking, was never designed to produce it.
South Korea’s domestic market, with a population of roughly 50 million, occupies a particular position within the Format Innovation Model. It is neither large enough to absorb risk the way France or Germany can, nor small enough to make international thinking instinctive from the outset, as is the case in the Netherlands or Denmark. For much of its television history, Korea looked inward and when it looked outward, it looked to Japan.
That orientation has fundamentally shifted. Park is direct about the limitations of the domestic market: “Companies that focus exclusively on the Korean domestic market have very little chance of success. The Masked Singer is a very rare case. Very rare.” His current strategy reflects this reality. Rather than developing formats for Korean broadcasters and hoping they travel, he now aims to develop formats directly for the global market so that international buyers discover the format first, and only then recognise it as Korean.
“Companies that focus exclusively on the Korean domestic market have very little chance of success. The Masked Singer is a very rare case. Very rare.”
– Wonwoo Park
Our reflections: This reversal of the domestic-first logic is significant. It mirrors the strategic orientation of smaller markets like the Netherlands, where international scalability is built into the development process from the start. For Park, this is less a philosophical choice than a structural necessity imposed by weak terms of trade at home.
South Korea scores high on uncertainty avoidance, and the television industry reflects this acutely. Park’s account of pitching The Masked Singer illustrates just how resistant the system is to genuinely new ideas. When he first presented the concept at MBC, singers performing with their identities completely concealed, almost everyone rejected it. The format was too unfamiliar, too difficult to visualise. Only two people supported it: one producer willing to take the risk, and a senior colleague who simply felt it would be a shame to let the idea die. A single shoot was approved.
The show aired during the holiday season and achieved a 16% rating. Only then did the consensus shift. “After that success, every production person was suddenly saying: oh yes, I agreed on that. I was the one who saw it.” He laughs telling it.
His advice to creative leaders follows directly from this experience. “Whenever I suggest something new, everyone is uncomfortable. Because it’s hard to imagine. And they say: I don’t think it will work. Never say that. Never. Just don’t kill the possibility before it has a chance.”
Our reflections: The near-failure of The Masked Singer is not an anomaly but a symptom. In ecosystems with high uncertainty avoidance, the decision-making process systematically filters out ideas that are hardest to imagine, which are, by definition, the most original ones. That The Masked Singer survived this filter was, by Park’s own account, largely a matter of chance.
One of the most significant constraints Park identifies is the rights structure that governs Korean broadcasting. Historically, IP has flowed automatically to the broadcaster after a show airs, leaving the original creator with little or no claim to the format’s international value. Park calls it plainly “a toxic regulation”, one inherited from Japan, and one the industry is now actively fighting to change. He points to the UK model, where rights are shared between broadcaster and producer in a defined ratio, as the direction Korea needs to move toward.
In the meantime, his response is pragmatic. “Good ideas are not enough. You need the funds, the network, the right people around you. We try to connect all of that and make the IP as strong as possible before we go to a broadcaster.” It is, he implies, the only way to enter that conversation from a position of any strength.
Our reflections: The weakness of terms of trade in Korea operates as a structural disincentive to invest in original format development. It is one of the clearest areas where the ecosystem undermines the very creativity it produces. Park’s internationalisation strategy is in part a workaround: by targeting global markets first, he bypasses the domestic rights dynamic that would otherwise absorb the value of his work.
Where internal market incentives fall short, the South Korean government has intervened deliberately and systematically. The Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) funds a wide range of creative projects, from individual productions to R&D teams and student programmes, with grants ranging from approximately €6,000 to €1.7 million per project. Park is careful to contextualise the scale: KOCCA funding typically represents around 5% of total domestic production costs. But its impact on international visibility is disproportionate, accounting for up to 50% of a project’s global exposure through networks, market access, and strategic positioning.
The Masked Singer was itself a turning point in this policy. “After The Masked Singer sold well internationally, KOCCA really woke up to what this could mean. The number of projects they support went up a lot after that.” Dedicated offices have since opened in Los Angeles and Europe, with format distribution now an explicit part of the agency’s international strategy.
Our reflections: KOCCA functions less as a creative development fund and more as an internationalisation infrastructure. It compensates for weak market incentives by providing the distribution networks and global positioning that individual producers cannot build alone. This is a distinctive feature of the South Korean model: state intervention as a substitute for ecosystem conditions that would otherwise inhibit international reach.
Park organises creativity differently from the models typically associated with Western production companies. dI turn is deliberately structured around complementary specialists, such as translators, rule designers and visual creators, rather than generalist producers. “Everyone is an expert in their own field. And when even a small idea comes in, all that expertise together can make something really strong. That’s what teamwork means to me.” It is, he notes, an unusual model in a Korean industry dominated by individual players.
This model exists within a broader industry culture that is, by Park’s own description, intensely competitive and rigidly hierarchical. He estimates that around 20,000 people in Korea are actively developing ideas for new formats, all competing within a structure where advancement is slow and seniority governs access. He sees this dynamic as both a constraint and, paradoxically, a source of creative energy: the societal pressure to succeed, to stand out, to produce something new, drives a restless appetite for the next idea.
Park draws a sharp contrast with Japan, which he characterises as more tradition-bound and less open to external influence. “In Japan, you go back after one year and pretty much everything is the same. In Korea, you go back after one month and many things have changed. That’s just how we are.” Korea absorbs global trends actively, not to copy them, but to recombine them. “We take the best from different shows, different cultures, and we mix it but with a Korean touch. We don’t copy. We recreate.” The company’s internal dictum captures this orientation directly: whatever doesn’t yet exist in the world is, by definition, the most innovative thing.
Our reflections: Park’s account points to a fundamental tension at the heart of the South Korean ecosystem. The Format Innovation Model would, on most dimensions, predict limited original output: high uncertainty avoidance, weak terms of trade, strong vertical integration, and a rigid hierarchy that concentrates decision-making power in few hands. What partially offsets these structural disadvantages is a culturally embedded drive toward the new a restlessness that is less a product of creative freedom than of competitive pressure. But that cultural disposition alone is insufficient. It is government intervention, above all, that makes the model work. KOCCA does not fix the underlying conditions; it compensates for them. It provides the international infrastructure, distribution networks, market access, global positioning that the market itself fails to generate. South Korea’s success in format export is, in this sense, not evidence of a well-functioning creative ecosystem. It is evidence of what becomes possible when deliberate public policy steps in to carry what the ecosystem cannot.