With the advent of the era of New Culture, or the era of culture industry, described as one of the sunrise industries in the 21st century, the field of culture and art has become more dynamic and more sensitive to the uncertainty surrounding its futur...
With the advent of the era of New Culture, or the era of culture industry, described as one of the sunrise industries in the 21st century, the field of culture and art has become more dynamic and more sensitive to the uncertainty surrounding its future development. Amidst these changes, the activities of culture and art organizations are required to be done in such a way to bring more professionalism and economic principles in correspondence with more specialized cultural policies.
In this new era, the National Changgeuk Company of Korea (founded in 1962) and the two similar art organizations run by a local government, respectively, Cheonbuk Municipal Changguk Company and Kwangju Municipal Korean Changgeuk Opera Company as well, will also need to undergo a fundamental change and innovation if they are to move towards sustainability and to achieve their ultimate goals of preserving and promoting traditional arts through the popularization and internalization. Specifically, they will have to respond to the call for managerial rationalization in the sense of survival competition by recognizing the reality that the field of arts is not simply a one-way recipient of welfare enhancement policies any longer, but a kind of industry.
It is true that such publicly-run Changgeuk companies have made great contribution to the Korean traditional art field through their committed efforts to preserve the traditional form of musical theater that has developed from Pansori and to establish an improved form of that.
Despite the past remarkable achievements, however, there are still several organizational management issues to be improved and amended in those theatrical companies such as promotion bottleneck, insufficient production budget, loose work ethics among company members, lack of performance evaluation system, lack of professionally trained planning staff, and most importantly, issues concerning obtaining an exclusive-use theater and a corporate form of organization structure.
Therefore, this study attempts to identify and analyze internal and external issues and to suggest a set of solutions to the raised issues through reviewing the quantitative figures available summarizing the history of their past activities and the status quo including organization structure and personnel, and making comparison with other publicly-run art organizations, domestic and overseas, in terms of the management practices such as performance evaluation of company members.
The history of publicly-run Changgeuk companies, especially the National Changgeuk Company of Korea is essentially that of modern Changgeuk in Korea and their achievements are so great and their roles are so essential that it is keenly needed to make fundamental changes in terms of organizational structure, personnel management, and facilities infrastructure for them to keep on playing such important roles. Among others, the organizations should be allowed to have independent and self-autonomous responsibilities in the whole management areas from theater performance and production planning and budgeting to establishing work ethics and recruiting company members. The key point is that the company itself, not under the control and governance of the externally controlling entity such as the government, local government bodies, or theaters, should be given complete autonomy and stand alone with its own theater.
Next, once they are given self-autonomy, they could exist as a form of corporate or self-operating entity with responsibility, both independent from an external controlling entity. Only with this precondition fulfilled, the company members will feel responsible and a strong sense of belonging to demonstrate their full talents and abilities.
In addition to this very essential issue, this study addresses other critical issues such as preparation of Changgeuk opera actors, activities of members outside the company, and financial issues, along with a set of suggestions concerning those matters. It is hoped that this study will make significant contribution to rebirth of the current publicly-run organizations representing Korean opera before the world and through this to the more popularized and internationalized Korean unique culture, Changgeuk.