The volume of government money going toward the arts, theaters, music, museums and heritage over the next year has shown the highest increase among all budget categories.

According to the annual budget for next year, recently unveiled by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the ministry’s total budget is estimated at KRW 4.87 trillion, divided into smaller budgets of KRW 2.47 trillion and KRW 2.39 trillion each. The ministry's share of the overall government budget showed a 10.2 percent increase this year, over last year’s figure of KRW 4.22 trillion.

Including money going to the ministry and money heading to other projects, the total amount of money the central government will spend on all aspects of "culture" this year is KRW 5.97 trillion. This is a 10.4 percent increase over last year’s KRW 5.41 trillion. This is also the highest increase among all sectors of the government budget. The overall "culture budget" includes money for the Cultural Heritage Administration, the Korean Communications Commission and budgets to create digital content at the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning.

The culture ministry explained that its main goal in making next year’s projections is to bring cultural enrichment to every citizen's life. The ministry also plans to invest in six core tasks: make the arts more accessible in a normal person's daily routine, incubate content, promote tourism and sports, generate more jobs for youth and for the less privileged, create an environment where people have more leisure time and take part in more sports, help increase the popularity of Korean mass media around the world, and, finally, create "cultural spaces" and set up investment funds to support the arts, museums and other creative industries.

In detail, the ministry’s budget allocated to sports showed the largest increase, followed by the content industry and tourism.


The ministry will open as many as 1,000 "cultural events," including outdoor concerts and art exhibitions, in order to make the arts part of everyone's daily life, especially in rural areas. It will inject KRW 10 billion to promote the government's “Cultural Wednesday” program, which offers discounts and benefits on the last Wednesday of every month for theaters, cinemas, museums and galleries. It will also invest KRW 13.5 billion to build 30 art venues and concert halls around the country.

In the sports sector, the ministry’s budget next year rose 23.7 percent to reach KRW 1.29 trillion. Last year it was at KRW 2.48 billion. In the contents industry, the ministry allocated KRW 612.2 billion, up 18.1 percent from last year's numbers. The ministry plans to raise its budget in the content sector, including copyright and media, by 20 percent by 2018.

In tourism, the ministry assigned KRW 1.34 trillion. The ministry will provide financial support for tourism-related businesses in order to expand the tourism infrastructure and to boost competitiveness. In order to incubate tourism firms that have high added value, it will create a tourism support fund that will invest KRW 20 billion over five years starting in 2015.


To generate more jobs, the ministry will carry out 16 projects and make nearly 25,000 jobs available by investing KRW 176.6 billion next year. It will also increase the budget for cultural heritage protection projects, including setting up disaster control systems at traditional temples. The budget will increase to KRW 47.1 billion to cover 9 projects for 2015, from this year’s budget of KRW 30.8 billion that covered 8 projects.

The ministry will build new cultural centers in Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, and a center for culture and tourism in Paris. Finally, it allotted KRW 9 billion to conduct the 2015-2016 Korea-France Exchange Year project which marks the 130th anniversary of the Korea-France diplomatic relationship.

By Yoon Sojung
Korea.net Staff Writer
arete@korea.kr