After decades working at the crossroads of law and entertainment — from serving as a prosecutor and entertainment lawyer to leading CJ ENM as its chief executive officer — Kang Ho-sung is taking on a new challenge: Building an agency that redefines what it means to professionally represent South Korean celebrities.
His latest venture, KHS Agency, goes beyond traditional management, he said.
“Korea’s management system still hasn’t properly developed a specialized agency system,” Kang told The Korea Herald. “Now that the Korean market is one of the leading markets in the global entertainment industry, I believe it’s time for the level of care and support for artists and creators — the core of the entertainment business — to be significantly upgraded.”
While most Korean management agencies focus on scouting and training new talent, KHS Agency aims to offer what Kang calls “one-stop strategic care,” a full-service model inspired by the “total talent management” model in the US — popularized by major agencies such as Creative Artists Agency and William Morris Endeavor.
A total talent management agency not only focuses on discovering and developing talent and booking opportunities for their clients, but also offers end-to-end strategic support, such as contract negotiation, image branding, legal advice, global expansion and crisis management.
“Once an artist becomes famous, they’re often left to figure things out on their own,” said Kang, who launched his venture more than three decades after he started his legal professional career as a prosecutor in 1993. KHS Agency, founded in July, consists of lawyers and other legal experts Kang got to know as he built his career as an entertainment lawyer
“We fill that gap … so our artists can focus entirely on their creative work,” he explained.
For Kang, the shift to this model is a “necessary evolution.”
“In Korea, a professional agency system still hasn’t properly taken shape,” he said, bringing up Hollywood’s agency landscape, where agent qualifications are strictly regulated and legally protected.
“Our industry here in Korea has grown a lot in terms of quantity,” Kang said. “But we haven’t quite set up the right systems or rules.”
The reality of being a celebrity in Korea is often fraught with risk — especially in an environment where rumors or privacy breaches can go viral in minutes.
“In the Korean market, digital content spreads so quickly that scandals, privacy leaks and fake news can go viral in an instant,” Kang said. “Celebrities often find themselves completely alone in those moments, scrambling to respond without professional support.”
To counter this, KHS built an in-house risk management team consisting of lawyers and PR experts as well as a risk detection system powered by AI, to monitor online activity, flag early warning signs, and respond swiftly in a crisis.
“Crisis response is a highly specialized field, but in Korea, it’s still not treated that way,” he said, adding his expertise as a career attorney dealing with countless similar cases in the field could help him handle the matters of celebrities from a third-person point of view.
“The celebrity isn’t left to handle it alone,” he said.
Kang also boasts years of experience in watching domestic agencies negotiate with foreign platforms.
“It’s not just about signing the contract — it’s about what happens after,” he said. “Up until now, after contracts are signed, there’s often no proper oversight over how the project is managed, how profits are distributed, or how it wraps up. It tends to follow the foreign partner’s terms.”
That, he says, is where many Korean agencies fall short. They “step away too early,” he said, adding it leaves artists vulnerable to being sidelined in post-deal processes.
Kang says his agency will make sure they’re not treated as just “foreign talent” in unfamiliar territory.
“We’ll stay involved as a strategic overseer, someone who understands both sides of the industry and ensures fair, long-term outcomes,” Kang said.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.koreaherald.com ’
