Park to put policy priority on culture

President-elect Park Geun-hye, center, shakes hands with poet Kim Ji-ha and his wife Kim Young-joo during a visit to the Toji Foundation of Culture in Gangwon Province on Dec. 13. The foundation is devoted to spreading the literary legacy of the late master novelist Park Kyung-ri. / Korea Times file

What kind of changes in the cultural landscape can voters expect from a female president?

It is still too early to tell as Park Geun-hye, president-elect of the Saenuri Party, has not shown any strong signs that she is particularly devoted to cultural issues.

It would be hasty to associate her with culture, just because Park is a woman. Culture is one of the fields that has been largely overlooked during Park’s presidential campaign.

Her opponent Moon Jae-in of the Democratic United Party announced a set of cultural policies on Nov. 18, but Park failed to make a similar move during her presidential campaign. As a long-time lawmaker, she was mostly assigned to committees that deal with foreign policy, finance or health and welfare. At university, she majored in engineering.

Park Geun-hye playing tennis in her 20s. She has been an avid tennis player most of her life. / Yonhap

Culture and presidency

But this does not mean that culture will not have an important place in Park’s policy agenda.

While culture or sports may not have a significant place in the minds of voters, it is one area that past presidents have relied on to gain public support.

Former President Chun Doo-hwan built Seoul Arts Center and hosted the 1988 Seoul Olympics as a way of winning people’s support during his military dictatorship.

Park’s predecessor Lee Myung-bak, a businessman-turned-politician, was never associated with culture before he arrived at Cheong Wa Dae. But nonetheless significant strides in the field of culture have been made during his tenure, particularly in the expansion of various areas of “hallyu” or the Korean Wave and tourism.

Park Geun-hye at the piano at her Seoul residence

It is expected that Park will aim to improve upon such success of the cultural policies of the Lee administration.

Cultural experts in Park’s camp are mindful of the increasing role of the economic value of cultural exports as well as culture’s role in promoting Korea’s image abroad.

The hallyu sweep outside Korea has had a considerable ripple effect on the nation’s economy through related industries. The popularity of K-pop has gone beyond Asian borders, and now Korean singers are staging large concerts in Europe, and North and South America as well.

Psy recently made headlines when his “Gangnam Style” became the most-watched video of all time on YouTube in just five months, garnering more than 906 million views.

Park practices meditative breathing, a favored form of exercise for the President-elect. / Yonhap

The economic value of hallyu-related products, such as TV dramas, and pop music for this year could amount to around 12 trillion won ($10.44 billion), recent state research said. By 2020, it could reach $49.59 billion.

“It would be wise for the new administration to quickly access the past cultural legacies of the Lee administration and decide what projects to wrap up and begin some new projects,” the Lee Won-tae, researcher at Korea Culture and Tourism Institute wrote in a recent blog posting.

A booklet of Park’s major policy goals released on Dec. 20 contains some ideas on how to bring more innovation, creativity and wealth to the cultural sector.

Many of Park’s cultural policy goals coincide with or succeed those of the Lee administration.

Increasing national budget on culture

At the forefront of Park’s cultural policy initiatives is allocating more of the national budget to cultural affairs.

Many experts in the field have pointed out that the chronic problem with implementing cultural policy objectives has been budgetary limitations.

“An advanced national budget model would spend more on culture and creative industries. For us, the budget is simply too meager. Only about 1.14 percent of the national budget has been allocated for culture,” Culture Minister Choe Kwang-shik said in a previous interview with The Korea Times. “Entering the ranks of advanced nations will not be possible for Korea unless we start spending up to at least 2 percent of our national budget on advancing our culture,” he said.

In the aforesaid booklet, Park said one of her goals as president will be to seek measures to allocate 2 percent of the national budget to culture.

Diversifying hallyu movement

To make hallyu, led by K-pop, become a long-lasting cultural phenomenon, the culture ministry has strived to diversify its sources, such as traditional Korean culture, and tourism and sports among others.

As a recent state survey indicates, there are many who believe that the popularity of hallyu faces an uncertain future.

Around 66 percent of 3,600 respondents in nine countries (China, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, U.S., Brazil, France, U.K. and Russia) said that the popularity of Korean culture will subside in the next four years.

To assuage concerns about the longevity of hallyu, the Park administration is expected to focus on diversifying it, so that relatively unknown areas such as Korea’s fashion, literature and traditional tourism assets can be more promoted outside the nation.

As a record number of foreign tourists in the final year of the Lee administration visited Korea, the culture ministry is likely to keep its drive to promote tourism under Park’s presidency.

One of the top policy goals of the culture ministry has been to transform Korea in to a pleasant and visitor-friendly destination for foreign visitors. The number of tourists visiting Korea this year surpassed 10 million in November, for the first time ever.

Park’s policy booklet reiterates its commitments to advancing the nation’s tourism by increasing infrastructure and undertaking better maintenance of traditional tourism assets across the nation, many of which are Buddhist-related relics.

If the estimated 11.2 million foreign tourists expected to visit the country by the end of December materializes then Korea is likely to become the world’s 20th largest tourist destination. The number of inbound travelers has grown an average of 15 percent for 33 years since it exceeded 1 million in 1978. It topped 5 million in 2000 and surpassed 7 million in 2010.

In the booklet, Park also promised more support for professional artists and institutions, and to develop the unique cultural assets of provinces and rural areas as tourist attractions.

The booklet also shows that the Park administration will pay more attention to the well-being of sportsmen and women, and seek more cultural exchanges with North Korea. <The Korea Times/Do Je-hae>