Not too long ago, Daniel Dae Kim had an unusual encounter with a salmon. It had nothing to do with dinner.

The actor, director and producer lay down in a doctor’s office in Seoul for microinjections into his face of DNA from salmon sperm. The hope was to reduce inflammation and improve elasticity.

“I look like I got a little sunburn and a little redder than usual, but it’s not bad,” he said to a camera crew after the procedure. “OK, I’m camera-ready.”

Kim was putting his face on the line as part of the new CNN series K-Everything – Kim’s love letter to K-beauty, K-pop, K-food, K-film that looks at the global rise of Korean culture. It debuted on May 9 on CNN International and is also available on CNN and HBO Max.

“It’s an examination of how Korea has risen in the course of three short generations from a war-torn third-world country to one of the most modern places in the world,” Kim says.

“We’ll take a look at how that’s happened through food, through cinema, through beauty products and through music.”