The Humanities Is the Next Frontier for South Korea's Chaebol

Designed with a Ghibliesque imagination and backed by ample funding in every step of its construction, Starfield Library in Gangnam, Seoul, instantly became a requisite tourist attraction when it opened to great fanfare in 2017. It may well also be the most instagrammed library in South Korea. The 2,800-square meter space was built by the Shinsegae Group, a retail behemoth that owns E-Mart and Shinsegae Department Store—the country’s equivalent of Walmart and Macy’s respectively. (In the southe