Strives to make “K-style” spread into both popular culture and everyday life, including Korean cuisine and fashion, to gain sustainable growth for Hallyu
Deputy Minister Yoon Tae-yong of the MCST’s Office of Cultural Content Industry.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) is striving to nurture another pillar of Korean
content that will accelerate the proliferation of Hallyu (Korea Wave), such as K-pop and K-drama, said Deputy Minister Yoon Tae-yong of the MCST’s Office of Cultural Content Industry.
“We’re expanding financial support and infrastructure to cultivate stories, cartoons and indie-music while trying to make Hallyu achieve a sustainable growth by creating a rational distribution system designed to recognize the values of content and a fair trade environment, and promote bilateral cultural exchanges with foreign countries,” Deputy Minister Yoon said.
“Hallyu’s comprehensive concept, K-style is an essential asset based on Koreans’ creativity, challenging sprit, businesses and entertainers’ endless efforts, and a push for convergence with excellent IT technology,” Yoon added. “Making the most of this asset, Hallyu will spread into not only such popular culture as K-pop, but also everyday life culture, including Korean cuisine and fashion, leading to creating of the nation’s ingenious trend of K-style.”
The following are excerpts of an interview between NewsWorld and Deputy Minister Yoon in which he spoke of diverse policies to gain sustainable growth for Hallyu.
Question: Will you tell our readers about what role cultural enrichment will play in the “creative economy”?
Answer: The drama “My Love from the Star” has been a megahit. The drama has not only become an example of Korean cultural content that has spread to all parts of the world, but also it has created diverse spill-over effects such as a rise in Chinese tourists, a surge in sales of products related to the drama, and an increase in the value of Korean content. This is a representative example of how the creative economy is realized through cultural enrichment.
Cultural enrichment could lead to the realization of the creative economy when people not only watch and enjoy culture, melting into everyday life, but it also has industrial effects. There are a variety of industries, including the industrialization of traditional culture and “creative” tourism. Cultural content is one of the representative industries that can realize the creative economy through cultural enrichment.
One piece of content may be exploited into diverse areas such as movie, TV series, animation, digital cartoon, and character products. The content industry, which is a key industry based on creative foundation unlike the manufacturing industry, has quite higher employment induction an added value spill-over coefficient than other industries.
MCST is implementing diverse policies to spur the creative economy through cultural enrichment. Content funds are raised to invest in mega-projects with high risk at an early stage, global projects, and a program to foster gifted people with convergence creativity is in place. Contents Korea Lab is offering diverse support to help people transform ideas into start-up businesses, and it is developing diverse cultural technology to shore up the realization of the creative economy.
Q: Will you explain what steps have been taken to protect and strengthen copyright, which ultimately nurtures the cultural content industry?
A: Our ministry is ramping up efforts to probe and crack down on violators to protect copyright holders, while implementing diverse policies to enhance public awareness toward the importance of the copyright protection.
Police in charge of copyright enforcement around the country have conducted crackdowns and investigated complaints, reported and their own probes into copyright violations.
Handicapped people, former career women and the elderly manpower will be made available to monitor on-line and off-line copycat produce to take administrative penalties such as orders for deleting fake products and complaints against violations for prosecution.
On top of the copycat crackdowns, our ministry is strengthening efforts to educate and publicize youth, ordinary people and industry officials so that copyright infringements can be prevented and public awareness toward copyrights may be enhanced.
MCST is strengthening planned investigations to adapt to new forms of copyright violations that will come into being down the road. It’s a continuous effort, while expanding policies to protect copyrights, such as the inclusion of content on the protection of copyrights in elementary and middle school textbooks.
Q: Will you elaborate on the current status and prospects of Hallyu, in particular K-pop (Korean popular music)?
A: Hallyu exploded in popularity with a focus on dramas in the East Asian region in the late 1990s. It is now spreading even further in a more diversified format regardless of region, genre and generation.
With the development of a digitally smart environment such as the YouTube, the popularity of K-pop consumption is sweeping not only East Asia but also Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. Psy’s Gangnam Style, which caused a global sensation, surpassed 2 billion YouTube hits and topped iTunes charts in 30 countries, including the United Kingdom. And globally, Hallyu aficionado bodies number 843 in 73 countries with 6.7 million members in action.
By genre, Hallyu shows signs of an upsurge in not only drama but also overall segments of Korean culture, including animation, fashion and Korean cuisine. Pororo, “the president of kids,” has been exported to 110 countries, creating a market worth 250 billion won in sales, and awareness toward Korean fashion is mounting with Korean products topping the wish list.
Even though Hallyu is diversified, the reality is that the Korean content industry is still dogged with several problems such as the circulation of copycat works.
In an effort to overcome these problems, MCST is striving to nurture another wave of Korean content to succeed K-pop and K-drama. We’re expanding financial support and infrastructure to cultivate stories, cartoons and indie-music while trying to make Hallyu achieve a sustainable growth by creating a rational distribution system designed to recognize the values of content and a fair trade environment, and promote bilateral cultural exchanges with foreign countries.
Q: Will you introduce policies to make Hallyu K-style proliferate into fashion and Korean cuisine?
A: Our ministry is taking charge of not only offering direct policy support to spread Hallyu, but also serving as a coordinator to promote the independent evolvement of each segment.
Take a look at fashion, we provide such support as supporting the production of prototypes and consulting services to nurture new generation designers while simultaneously implementing policies to introduce prominent Korean fashion products at such foreign fashion meccas as New York and London.
MCST is building travel information network systems, such as smart tourism maps designed to provide information about things to see and eat with foreign tourists coming here to get a glimpse into Hallyu and promoting the spread of Hallyu by converging the medical field, MICE and other related industries.
Q: Will you touch upon plans to develop Korean’s homemade content?
A: Korea’s own ingenious content should be based on our traditional heritage and lively stories ingeniously living on each region. To this end, our ministry plans to accelerate efforts to foster each region’s content.
Take a look at Cheongdo’s bull-fighting festival, it is the Cheongdo area’s representative cultural product. Bull-fighting may be Korea’s ingenious content that cannot be seen in any other part of the world. By making the most of the one source, multi-use (OSMU) format to diversify bull-fighting to animation, character and tourism products, bull-fighting will be Korea's representative content.
The legendary fairy tale about Yeon Oh-rang and Sae Oh-nyeo, the couple who migrated to Japan during the Sila Dynasty, is the same case. It is a word-of-mouth story hailing from a specific district that could have great potential to be utilized as Korea’s ingenious content if it turns into a refined product.
The animation Frozen was all the rage globally and is based on a legendary tale of a Norwegian area, so the utilization and proliferation of an ingenious content will have diverse spillover effects.
Q: Do you see K-style as a precious national asset? What are the essential assets of K-style?
A: The K-style is Hallyu’s comprehensive concept. Its essential assets include Koreans’ creativity, challenging sprit, businesses and entertainers’ endless efforts, and a push for convergence with excellent IT technology.
Making the most of this asset, Hallyu will spread into not only such popular culture as K-pop, but also everyday life culture, including Korean cuisine and fashion, leading to creating of the nation’s ingenious trend of K-style.
Further, as global concern over K-style, such as Korean living culture and traditional culture, is expanding, we’re making strenuous efforts to make Korean content gain sympathy from many people around the world.
