From early days, Europe concentrated on culture to overcome issues arising from the decline of the secondary industry. Facilitation of culture has influenced on establishing the cultural identity of local residents as well as generating national wealt...
From early days, Europe concentrated on culture to overcome issues arising from the decline of the secondary industry. Facilitation of culture has influenced on establishing the cultural identity of local residents as well as generating national wealth and enhancement of national image and this is indication of the fact that culture would dominate lives of people and overall affairs in society in a way of carrying the urban (regional) regions.
With the fast conversion into information, knowledge and culture industry, Korea has steady improvement in cultural desire with its improvement of income level, 5-day working in a week, and full implementation of education for 5-day a week, but there is a significant issue of unbalance between the regions and the gap with the advanced countries in the level of expansion in regional culture-base facilities and sharing culture for all people.
With the full-scale local autonomy beginning in 1995, the culture-related facilities were beginning to structure around 4 major culture-based facilities nationwide in public library, museum-art hall, culture and art centers and house of culture. In particular, the interests on establishment and operation of the local literature centers have been heightened and this is attributable to the fact that the local literature center expresses well of regional sentiment to have the theme in artists and art works related to the region compared to other cultural facilities. It is further capable to integrate residents emotionally on the basis of the local background as well as having broad possibility of its facilitation in relations to the resident living. In 1990s when the local literature centers were mostly led by individual or private organization with direct operation, there were only 8 places for the above activities. And in 2000s, there have been active establishment and operation of government-led the local literature centers that there are a total of 70 institutions, consisting of 58 the local literature centers registered in the Korean Literature House Association and some other unregistered literature centers and scheduled to-be constructed as of 2012. According to the 'Research on Policies to Facilitate the local literature center in 2009’ by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, there are proposals to establish a total of 115 the local literature centers by 2019 that the establishment of the local literature center is expected to continue, but comparing to other culture-based facilities, the local literature center has yet to establish its systematic policy basis with lagging behind in diverse aspects in interest and level of recognition on literature by the public that there are significant issues that are interfering on facilitation. Therefore, this thesis has presented taken a look at the information support policies, operation status and problems on the present the local literature centers for alternative plans and policies through the case studies on overseas the local literature centers.
First of all, looking into the policies of central government to support the domestic the local literature centers, the core part is to support hardware aspects, such as, establishment of facilities. Most of policies allocate the special budgets related to establishment of the literature center to the local governments and the pertinent matters on the operation of the literature center are left on the local governments. Substantial part of the budget is exhausted before the establishment that there is a problem in securing the operation budget after the opening of the literature center. In addition, the operation of the local literature centers is undertaken by the personnel in charge of the local governments that they lacked the specialization, causing the interference of facilitating the local literature centers. In addition, in program operation, only support other than the budget of local governments is the culture and art promotion fund of the Arts Council Korea and this is also not sufficient that the program subscribing the local literature centers would not have the access to stable culture and art promotion fund on yearly basis.
Through the cases of domestic the local literature centers, there are issues on budget, operation expenses, human resources, system (law), programs and others and the policy proposal has been made by dividing for laws and regulations part, human resource part, operation part and program part.
The first is the legal aspect that there is a need for support and protection by legislating the local literature center related laws and regulations. Currently, the local literature center is yet to be legislated in laws and regulations that there is no fund support for operation under the circumstance.
The second is the human resource aspect that specialized human resource and auxiliary human resource are insufficient that there is a need to improve the working environment and welfare and it also requires to improve the curator system as well.
The third is the operation aspect that the operation method of the local literature center is mostly operated by the local governments and it has the difficulty in lack of specialization and facility management and operation. Therefore, it is prudent to have the facility management undertaken by the local government while the operation is exclusively undertaken by a consigned organization (foundation).
And, the fourth is the program aspect that, unlike foreign countries, the domestic the local literature centers are mostly focused on exhibition and event-oriented activities that it would need to strive for the facilitation of the local literature centers through the program connection of different the local literature centers as well as the direct and indirect support of surrounding tourist attraction sites and governments. Furthermore, it needs to have the participation of local residents, regional representatives, donators, business men and others as well as undertaking the role of 'Sarangbang' where they can meet and exchange each other. Furthermore, since the local literature centers that handle surviving artists are not allowed to join the Korea Literature Center Association that it needs to moderate the subscription requirements.
Under the flow of time by the new media generation, it is considered that the needs for steady studies through the changes and advancement of the local literature centers would be increased.