Marwan Granville is an actor and the producer and director of 101 Reasons to Visit South Korea, an upcoming documentary about K-pop, K-Beauty and all things Korean Culture in between. Having grown up with an appreciation for the Korean way of life, starting Tae Kwon Do in my formative years, and much later coming to enjoy the music and shows, and even learning the language (long before it was in style, I might add!), this was a project I was definitely interested in covering.
Given that my own artwork had been featured in an art exhibition in Gyeonggi-Do at the top of the year, and the fact that my brother (producer/author/singer Aaron Kaye Johnson) was also playing a promotional role on the project, I was more than happy to jump on a Zoom with Granville to understand just how this came about in the first place. Granville and I talked about why this is the perfect series for American viewers, especially to watch in this specific time in our country’s history.
“We were blessed to be able to be in the works of a tourism video bid,” Granville said about the inception of the film. “[The Korean Tourism Organization] wanted to take it from PBS and Youtube to an actual streaming network in America.”
On developing the relationship with the Tourism Ministry, Granville recalled gleaning culture from his father and the culmination of his past filmography leading up to this point.
“I always knew I wanted to travel around the world—I even had that prophesied to me from various spiritual individuals who came up to me and said that. So I was always looking for a way to do more than just business domestically, but business internationally…and the opportunity came through the Korean tourism organization to produce that video and create something that was out of the norm; not just a regular travel video.”
Revealing future plans for the series and the relevance of the first iteration, Granville explained that the goal is to help motivate people to explore various locales.
“The next episode we’ll do is 101 Reasons to Visit Koreatown, LA. Now, the reason it’s so amazing is that most people, when they think about going to Asia…they’re probably going to go to Japan and China first, you know, or maybe Thailand. Like me, I love Thai food. That’s my favorite food. I love Korean BBQ too,” Granville said. “But this is an opportunity for those who, I mean, let’s be honest, there’s a lot of people that don’t have passports, let alone driver’s license. They’re not, they’re not going no time soon. Maybe this can motivate them to go.”
With a lot of positive speculation aimed toward the nation, I asked how he envisions the country and what he sees in retrospect, and his outlook was doubly optimistic.
“As an actor, director, producer, I can also see where the American culture has a lot of synergy and we’re already working together and…we’re very influential on, I believe, K-pop and some of the other real prominent industries that they’re, you know, kicking butt in,” Granville said.
Elijah Isaiah Johnson is a writer/illustrator/animator. His most recently published works include the Amazon best-seller Nightmare Detective, Noir is the New Black, the Comixology Indie best-selling series Leaders of the Free World, The Formula and much more.
