With the shifts of the Korean local culture and arts supporting system after the mid-2000s, local culture and arts foundations established in metropolitan areas have emerged as the new Korean regional culture and arts supporting agencies. Focused on t...
With the shifts of the Korean local culture and arts supporting system after the mid-2000s, local culture and arts foundations established in metropolitan areas have emerged as the new Korean regional culture and arts supporting agencies. Focused on these metropolitan regional agencies, this thesis aims to examine the current situation and the problems of the local culture and arts supporting system, as well as the analysis of case studies of foreign structures and the manner in which local culture and arts supporting systemsshould be built. This research is summarized as follows.
First of all, the Korean local culture and arts supporting agencies are classified as four main bodies: the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Arts Council Korea as central agencieseach province’s and city’s competent ministry such as the Division of Culture and the local culture and arts foundation as metropolitan regional agencies.
A local culture and arts promotion council is an agency with a mission to review municipal cultural policy and fundamental measures. Its establishment and operating status seem to be entangled. There are several reasons why this has occurred. Not every province or city has established its own culture and arts promotion council in its region; many cases show that the local promotion councils are managed only for the sake of formality. The legal system to enable the local culture and arts promotion council includes problems of incompleteness as well. While the Culture and Arts Promotion Act already deleted the related articles to support their establishment, some regions still include this matter in their municipal codes. Moreover, the new article that creates a local culture and arts council as the new regional reviewing and supporting agency has already been inserted under the Culture and Arts Promotion Act. Because of this, confusion has emerged between the newly established agency - the local culture and arts council - and the permanent operating agency - the local culture and arts promotion council. To solve this confusion, the consolidation of the legal systems such as the revision of the provisions and ordinances should be addressed.
Second, this thesis focuses on the present circumstance regarding the local culture and arts promotion endowment. In each province and city, the endowment was established to be dedicated to supporting the local culture and arts. In 2009, it subsidized only 2,950,000won per project on average; a total of 15,900,000,000 won was granted to 5,011 projects.
In addition, the research about each region’scodes about the endowment found that only seven provinces and cities, including Busan, keep the name of the culture and arts promotion endowment in their municipal code. Nine other provinces and cities eliminated the culture and arts promotion codes from the beginning, or deleted the related articles. Instead of securing the endowment, the existing funds were transferred to the newly established foundations’ funds, or permanent property. For example, Seoul and Gyunggi-do deleted the articles about the endowment, and the term "endowment" was even eliminated from the regulations. These issues indicate that the legal system regarding the culture and arts promotion endowment needs some revision.
Third, Korea has the strongest centralized authoritarian model among the classification of the national supporting models. The transformation from the Korea Culture and Arts Foundation to the Arts Council Korea meant the establishment of the culturalgovernance by the private and public cooperative governance. However, despite four years of the Arts Council Korea, a new supporting structure has not developed yet. This is because the role and the function between the government and the Council have not separated yet. Also, the cooperativerelationship between Arts Council Korea and the local culture foundations has not been established clearly. To establish clear-cut lines of each supporting body's coverage, and the division of works, this thesis points out three main strategies: division and cooperation, difference, and specialization.
Fourth, local supporting agencies should be networked for the effective supporting system. The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), the U.S. membership organization of state arts agencies, is a good example representing how to play an important role as a representative. In Korea, the Korean Association of Regional Arts Agencies (KARAA) was established in 2007 to network the regional agencies. However, KARAA seems to present unsatisfactory activities so far. For the further revitalization of the regional arts agencies, KARAA's legal status as a separate juridical foundation should be secured first. Also KARAA has to enforce the projects and policy abilities in order to support the members’ development and technical system. In addition, the local culture foundations’ participation should be expanded.
Last, this thesis identifies the establishment of the local culture supporting system and the improvement of the regulation system for the local arts and culture promotion. Currently, the Culture and Arts Promotion Act regulates the local culture and arts council under Article 4, such as supporting agencies, financial resources, council bodies, etc. Despite this regulation, the practical operations are managed differently in each metropolitan area and city. Therefore, the maintenance of the legalstructure is required for further development. Specifically, the items listed below need some consolidation; they are misinterpreted across each city and province.
① Article 4 - Clause 1 regarding the legal establishment of local culture and arts councils
② Article 19 regarding the local culture and arts promotion endowment
③ Article 36regarding the organization of the council bodies, whose Enforcement Ordinance has not established yet.
The above states the outline in which this thesis mainly addresses local culture and arts supporting systems. The research is conducted through the analysis of the related laws and provisions, and the ordinance of 16 cities and metropolitan areas. Also, it looks over each local culture foundation’s records including online resources and a comparative analysis of the statistical data.
Even though this paper critically examined the extensive resources of 16 metropolitan areas and cities, this thesis still bears the insufficiency of in-depth analysis. In order to present the alternative proposal to solve the stated problems in this paper, further in-depth studies are required. The subjects should be strengthened through the in-depth studies of the standard Culture and Arts Promotion Ordinance analysis by systematic comparison analysis of each ordinance, and the establishment of the supporting agency models by each culture foundation's structures and business field analysis.
Despite these limitations, this thesis inspects the current situation and problems of the local culture and arts supporting system in perspective. Especially, the objectification of each metropolitan area’s and city’s present conditions will be valuable to provide several key points for further system maintenance. Based on these critical points, more in-depth and substantial studies should be addressed.