Entering the global age in the 21st century, competitive edge based on "culture" has increasingly replaced material competitivity as the deciding factor of a nation's competitive power. In Korea, it's been already almost ten years since the government...
Entering the global age in the 21st century, competitive edge based on "culture" has increasingly replaced material competitivity as the deciding factor of a nation's competitive power. In Korea, it's been already almost ten years since the government employed cultural welfare as one of the major directions in its cultural policies. Unfortunately, however, there are still no systematic laws regarding cultural welfare. Thus this study set out to search for the ways to activate cultural welfare through the lottery fund. Currently Korea is in the early stage of cultural welfare, and so is the lottery fund.
Since 2004 when the influx of the lottery fund started into the culture and art community, a focus has gradually shifted in support for the community from the projects that emphasize artistic originality and creativity to those that try to appease the materialistically and economically alienated class. The global village is changing from the "welfare state" to the "welfare society" and from "passive welfare" to "active welfare." The current policy directions of the Lottery Committee definitely seem to go in reverse to those changes. It's even likely that they can be regarded as an element of a nanny state and detrimental to the growth of Korea's cultural welfare in its infancy.
Trying to address the problems with the lottery fund-aided projects, the investigator examined the structure of the Lottery Committee and the current state and issues of public projects based on the lottery fund. In case of the Promotional Fund for Culture and Art which receives grants from the lottery fund, it's hard to predict future projects due to the constant changes to its budget caused by the instability of the lottery fund itself and the approach of collecting fund publicly. The current movement to privatize the Promotional Fund for Culture and Art can jeopardize the influx of the lottery fund. They should find some ways to guarantee long-term influx of the lottery fund in order to prevent it from happening.
It seems like a good idea to apply fixed distribution rates for a certain period of time in allocating the lottery fund because the current fluid distribution rates, which have been identified as one of the problems of lottery fund-aided projects, do hamper the growth of the projects. But the problem is that there are no solid grounds in respect to the specific distribution rates. Thus it's necessary to introduce a procedure of collecting public opinions to build grounds for such policies and induce an agreement from people, who are the actual resource of the lottery fund.
It's also necessary to reform the perceptions of the staff in charge of the business of the lottery fund-aided projects. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Arts Council Korea should define each others' roles clearly and thus reduce unnecessary frictions between them, making a contribution to heightening the quality level of culture and art projects aided by the lottery fund. The artists and concerned organizations also need to change their perceptions.
It's an often case that they don't analyze the recipients of the lottery fund thoroughly in planning project contents, which has led to the multiplication of one-time projects aiming at benefiting from the lottery fund. Such projects can shorten the life of culture and art projects aided by the lottery fund. Also essential to the longevity of lottery fund-aided projects are the changes to people's perceptions. The majority of lottery buyers are from the middle- or lower-income class. There are some questions raised about the regressivity of income, arguing that it doesn't serve the principles of equality to collect money from those classes and use it for public projects. It's also been criticized that it's not right to collect money appealing to the speculative spirit of people and to grant it to public projects. Those questions and criticisms can be resolved if people change their perceptions of lottery fund-aided projects and understand they are for the realization of cultural welfare.
There will be no ongoing growth of cultural welfare without the expansion of its meaning. The cultural welfare policies by the Korean government including the lottery fund focus on "passive cultural welfare." The benefits of cultural welfare should expand from the current economic domain to include the entire population in order to meet their intellectual needs as well as their economic and material ones. Once necessary funds are secured to activate cultural welfare, they should take on educating professionals in cultural welfare to maintain the consistency of cultural welfare. The education of cultural welfare workers and culture coordinators recently suggested by the culture and art community will work to solidify the infrastructure of Korea's cultural welfare.
The 21st century is the century of culture. A nation's cultural growth can create chances to promote its excellence home and abroad. The study results reveal some information about the current state of Korea's cultural welfare and the situation and problems of the lottery fund, whose influx to the culture and art community started in recent years. But it was not easy to maintain research consistency throughout the study because of the blurry boundaries of cultural welfare, which highlights even more the absence of laws and policies regarding culture welfare.
The investigator felt sorry not to provide more in-depth discussions about the impacts of lottery fund-aided projects on the culture community. It's expected that the results will contribute to the growth of culture and art projects aided by the lottery fund as well as the activation of cultural welfare.