Nation awaits road map for President Lee's ambitious K-culture 'flourishment' pledge

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Nation awaits road map for President Lee's ambitious K-culture 'flourishment' pledge

Published: 05 Jun. 2025, 18:02 Updated: 05 Jun. 2025, 18:08

JIN EUN-SOO
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

President Lee Jae-myung, second from left, speaks with famed scriptwriters of Korea in Jeonju, North Jeolla on May 7 where he discussed ways to foster domestic contents. [YONHAP]

President Lee Jae-myung's initiatives for K-culture are quite ambitious compared to his rivals and previous administrations, but a detailed road map for funding and implementation is yet to be presented.

From constructing a 50,000-seat K-pop arena to launching a domestic streaming service to rival Netflix, his list of pledges for Korea’s cultural sector point out necessary yet bold undertakings.

“Culture is economy and it's the source of national competitiveness,” Lee said during his inauguration speech on Wednesday morning, mentioning “cultural flourishment” as one of four promises for the country.

“From K-pop and K-dramas to K-movies, K-beauty and K-food, Korean culture is captivating the world. We must connect this global enthusiasm for Korean culture to the growth of culture industries and the creation of good jobs. Through active support for arts and culture, we will set new global standards in content and elevate Korea into one of the world's top five soft power nations.”

This image released by Netflix shows Lee Jung-jae in a scene from ″Squid Game.″ [NETFLIX]

As part of a broader agenda, Lee proposed boosting Korea's soft power competitiveness to No. 5 from the current 12 and generating revenue of 300 trillion won from the so-called K-culture, encompassing K-pop, K-drama, K-webtoon, K-game, K-food and K-beauty, by building infrastructure and offering financial incentives.

According to Korea Creative Contents Agency, Korea logged 157.6 trillion won of sales in K-contents last year. It means that in order to reach 300 trillion won target by 2030, the industry has to post an average of 11.3 percent of annual growth every year. That is a significant jump from the 2.2 percent growth the country has shown last year, particularly excelling in webtoon, music and game, the agency data shows.

Subsequently, Lee bumped up the cultural exports target to 50 trillion won from 18.8 trillion won during the cited period.

“It is a good thing that Lee understands the importance of nurturing culture as an industry, but it lacks details in terms of finances and also there will need to be a contingency plan of how to mitigate interests of concern from different players in the industry because there will be big gaps between what the big players and the small players want,” says culture critic Kim Heon-sik.

Taylor Swift performs at Wembley Stadium as part of her Eras Tour June 21, 2024, in London. [AP/YONHAP]

The proposed 50,000-seat music arena stands out, particularly in light of Korea’s lack of concert venues — a factor believed to have played a role in Taylor Swift skipping Korea during her Eras Tour last year.

Currently, Inspire Arena is the only large-size venue in Korea specifically built for music performances and even that is not able to accommodate more than 15,000. Other popular options are KSPO Dome and Gocheok Sky Dome but their original purpose as sports stadium have hindered artists from booking the venue during game seasons.

Lee also promised to build small and medium-sized concert venues for budding K-pop artists to expand opportunities.

Retailing Korean-made contents to global audiences through domestic platforms is also one of key agendas on Lee's pledges.

“We have to make public streaming service or something,” Lee said in a conference with famed scriptwriters such as Kim Eun-sook of “The Glory” (2024) and Park Hae-young of “My Mister” (2018) in early May.

“All contents are binded to global streaming services. If we had our own platform, servicing contents like 'When Life Gives You Tangerines' to global viewers by ourselves, imagine how much money we could have had made.”

Korea's streaming market has largely been monopolized by Netflix for several years, pushing domestic players like Tving and Waave to consider merging to stand a chance against the American streaming giant.

The new administration plans to establish policy funds to support creators for domestic streaming services. It will also expand tax incentives for investors that have put down their money for contents created by these small players.

Supporting translation and dubbing services for domestically made streaming contents were also outlined in the policy book, although detailed implementation plans were not ready.

“Tax incentives are policies again centered on big players who are able to borrow money. More aggressive financial support measures such as reimbursement should be considered an option,” critic Kim said.