KHIP / About

A boutique cross-
border
practice.

Principal-led on every project. The work doesn't get handed down.

Two decades at the seam
between Korea and the world.

The principal has spent twenty years working at the intersection of Korea and global markets — across government communications, venture capital, corporate PR, mobile gaming, and journalism. The path was never linear, and that's the point: each stop built a different kind of fluency, and the combination is what clients are actually hiring.

Today the practice runs alongside an owned media property — a weekly newsletter on Korean culture and content industries that has become a source international press cites.

Founder LinkedIn
Connect with Jiyoung Lee

A non-linear path.

2017 — Present
Founder & Principal
KHIP — Boutique Studio
100+ projects across 33+ countries. Retainers with global SaaS, automotive, supplements, and financial services clients. 85% client retention.
Ongoing
K-Pop Journalist
US-based K-Culture Magazine
Long-form K-pop industry journalism. Cited by international press covering Korean music industry.
VC Era
Communications Lead
Israeli-Korean Venture Capital Group
Investor communications for portfolio companies including listed health-tech, energy, and oncology firms. Coordinated 500-attendee Korea-Israel innovation conferences.
Corporate Era
Global PR
Major Korean Telecom (5G Era)
Cross-border media relations across US, Europe, and Asia during the 5G commercialization period.
Founder Era
Co-founder
Mobile Gaming Startup
Scaled from 3 to 45 employees. App Store #1 title. Seven years across mobile game development and product marketing.
Government Era
Communications
Cultural Diplomacy · Seoul Metropolitan
Foundational K-wave period communications work. Multi-language outreach, international press relations, cultural diplomacy programs.
Education
Joint MA — Korean-English Translation & Interpretation
Korea · Australia
BA in Political Science & Russian, top Korean foreign-studies university.

Visual work, led by an
NY-trained designer.

The visual side of the studio is led by an NY-trained designer (BFA, Design) whose practice spans editorial, brand identity, social, and presentation work. Her sensibility — magazine-rooted, type-disciplined, white-space-confident — is the reason our visual deliverables don't read as agency-template.

Together the founder + designer duo runs the studio as a deliberate two-person practice, with all client work going through both hands before delivery.

Four operating principles.

01

Boutique by design

We work with a small, deliberate roster of clients. The work stays close to the principals. Volume is the enemy of craft.

02

Principal-led

The founder is on every project. No layered handoffs. No junior-only execution. The work is done by the people you hire to do it.

03

Bilingual native

Korean ↔ English with deeper-language depth than agencies stitching together freelancers. We write and edit in both languages natively.

04

Owned-media credibility

Our public writing — newsletter, magazine column, signature analyses — is part of the practice, not separate from it. Clients hire the intelligence behind the work.

Industry breadth,
specialty depth.

Anonymized by industry. Clients have included household names across B2B platforms, supplements, automotive, financial services, mobile gaming, security, public sector cultural agencies, streaming media, payments, and capital management.

B2B Platforms
Natural Health
Mobility
Capital Management
Document Services
Mobile Gaming
Security Services
Health Tech
Payments
Streaming Media
Public Sector
K-Content
Fintech
Deep Tech
Beauty & Lifestyle

What we publish.

Newsletter
Weekly analysis from inside Seoul
Korean culture and content industries — frameworks, deep dives, signal reads.
Magazine Column
K-Pop industry journalism
Long-form K-pop journalism in a US magazine. Cited by international press.
Data Platform
Music intelligence database
Proprietary database tracking Korean music industry credits, personnel, and signal flows.
Reports
Signature analyses
Quarterly long-form analyses on Korean industries — written for citation by global press.
// 24-Hour Response · Seoul Working Hours

Want to work together?