America built the greatest cultural machine in history. Then quit. Here's what filled the vacuum.

Culture turned out to be infrastructure. We knew that in 1950. We forgot it by 1999. Thirty years later, the evidence is in your bathroom cabinet and on your streaming queue.

Seoul, May 1994. A presidential advisor does the math on a piece of paper and the number comes out wrong enough that he shows it to someone.

Jurassic Park had just grossed $850 million on a $63 million budget. South Korea, at the time, exported roughly 700,000 cars a year.

One Steven Spielberg film. Two full years of Korean auto exports.

The memo made head…