The government plans to nurture the domestic content industry to step up the momentum of hallyu, better known as the Korean Wave. In this regard, it will establish the tentatively-named Story Creation Institute, designed to explore stories, a driving force behind the domestic content industry, as well as the so-called Content Information Support Center catering to the provision of information related to content in Korea and abroad.
Minister Choe Kwang-shik, of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST), announced a plan to strengthen the global competitiveness of the Korean content industry at a briefing with reporters at a performance hall near Hongik University in Seoul on April 17. The plan is the third and last part of the top three strategies to ensure sustainable growth of the so-called Korea-culture, or “K-Culture,” representing hallyu. Earlier, the MCST announced a strategy to develop traditional Korean culture in a creative fashion this past January and a plan to nurture Korean culture and arts, or “K-Arts,” this past February. The three-part plan is aimed at raising content exports to $8.3 billion, attracting up to 13 million international tourists, and enhancing the nation’s brand standing to the global top 10 by 2015.
Minister Choe said, “Hallyu, which has now focused on specific genres and fixed styles of music and dramas, has limitations to growth.” He noted, “Comprehensive steps have been established for the national development of diverse fields of content to blaze a trail toward the global market.”
The global limelight on Korean culture has mounted, particularly centering around K-pop music and performances, and industrial achievements have spread. There are worries and uncertainties about sustainable growth for hallyu and its spillover effects into diverse fields.
There are diverse kinds of pop culture content, but hallyu has focused on given genres and unified styles of music and dramas and it has been limited to consumption in the Asian region.
A survey by the Korea Foundation for International Culture Exchange (KOFICE), conducted in early 2012, showed that roughly 60 percent of respondents expressed doubts about the sustainability of hallyu’s momentum, saying that it would be over within four years.
A survey of 3,600 overseas Korean diplomatic mission officials in charge of hallyu, conducted by the economic daily Maeil Business Newspaper this year, showed that hallyu would likely fizzle out within five years, and foreigners would be fed with stereotyped dramas and K-pop performances. The outcomes of the survey are contained in “hallyu bonsaek” (seeing hallyu in its true colors). The book suggested the top four “MEGA” strategies °™ Multi-dimension, Ecosystem, Government and One Asia Momentum°™ to make hallyu a mainstream, not transient vogue.
MCST officials say that now is the time to come up with comprehensive steps to proliferate hallyu content evenly throughout the globe by enhancing content competitiveness and awareness toward multiculturalism. The Korean government also needs to foster the content industry as one of the national next-generation strategic growth engines so that it can move onto the global market beyond the small domestic market.
The existing Story Creation Center that made its debut in 2009 will turn into the Creation Academy, which will later evolve into the Korea Story Creation Institute.
Lectures and other support programs for writers have so far ended up as one-time events. Creating attractive stories is essential for making content success stories. Even big-ticket production costs, the best actors, and computer graphics do not guarantee success when there is a lack of content. The reality of the domestic content market is that it lacks story planning and development and has a profit-oriented investment and production structure in which storytelling experiments cannot be made and the entry of new writers onto the market is not easy.
To fix these problems, the ministry plans to build a comprehensive support system for boosting storytelling by establishing the Story Creation Institute, providing space for creative activities and implementing field-linked projects and staging contests.
Storytelling content for new writers will be created while a management system will be built to provide support for commercializing creative works. The government plans to cultivate the content industry into an export industry with the aim of raising exports from the current 3 billion won to 10 billion won in 2015.
The establishment of the Story Creation Academy is designed to cultivate new talents, reeducate writers, and work out manpower development regimes in the storytelling field as well as conduct related studies.
The forthcoming academy will implement projects to support the production of content and provide experiences related to storytelling in connection with field projects and opportunities to commercialize businesses through the matching of creation agents.
It will build a story market in which products with some quality standards are purchased and a stable environment will be created so that new and excellent writers can continue in their creative work.
The ministry is considering the creation of a content creation cluster for accommodating originators’ editing rooms, training facilities, database offices and content planning and creation firms on a plot of 99,075 square meters in Chungcheongbuk-do between 2012 and 2014. A feasibility study on the scheme is under way.
An additional content fund of 730 billion will be raised by 2015 to boost the top four core categories °™ global area, basic genres, shared growth, and convergence.
A large-scale, arena-type K-Pop performance hall will be created on a gross floor area of 66,000 square meters between 2012 and 2016 as part of efforts to upgrade the nation’s poor performance infrastructure. The performance facility with a capacity of 15,000 spectators will be built as a K-Pop infrastructure to boost the spread of hallyu in the Seoul metropolitan area at a cost of 150 billion won. The upcoming performance hall will accommodate such facilities as large, mid, and small-sized performance theaters, creation studios, rehearsal rooms, folk music database rooms, and 3D and 4D interactive exhibition and experience halls.
Currently, there is only one large-sized performance stage °™ the 1988 Olympic Gymnastics Hall with a capacity of 15,000 spectators in which K-Pop idols and big Korean star musicians, including singer Jo Yong-pil, can stage performances. The nation suffers a shortage of performance theaters, as nearly 80 percent of performance and other event space have normally been booked in advance.
The ministry plans to build a global studio on a gross floor space of 35,360 square meters between 2012 and 2016 and a high-definition drama town on an area of 33,421 square meters between 2012 and 2014 in order to facilitate the joint production of great movies and the attraction of locations in Korea.
The MCST also plans to establish a research institute specializing in culture technology within the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology this year in order to ramp up the domestic content industry’s creative capacity in the humanities.
The government plans to establish the Asian Music Market & Showcase representing Asia with the mid and long-term aim of developing it into a global music event resembling the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF). In the first stage, a conference centering around the Asian market, a showcase to display the diversity of K-Pop performances and a networking event linking those in the music industry and their counterparts in other fields will take place during 2012.
It plans to hold an international music festival and an Asian music awards ceremony in 2012.
