[Editorial] Cultural budget is lacking

The government has earmarked 1.04 trillion won for the cultural budget for next year. It is slightly more than 1% of the entire government budget for 2001. It would be a huge amount for the needy cultural circle.

Officials of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism are confident whenever the cultural budget is mentioned. For the first time, the cultural budget exceeded 1% of the entire government budget, and the total cultural budget for next year will hit 1 trillion won.

Until the early 1990s, the cultural budget was limited to around 100 billion won, and it accounted for less than 0.4% of the entire government budget. It must have increased substantially during the past 1-2 years.

Nevertheless, we can hardly say neither the current cultural budget is enough nor efficiently used. The cultural budget includes the budget for the tourism sector. Because culture and tourism are two different sectors, their budget has to be separated. Next year's tourism budget is 190 billion won, and that much has to be deducted from the cultural budget.

What is a more important problem is how to spend the cultural budget. The cultural budget also has to be used for those sectors that requires investment on a long-term basis, which include pure cultural areas. Of course, it is important to support cultural industries. But the pure culture has to be activated in order to realize development in cultural industry.

The local environment for pure culture is very poor. Following the nation's foreign exchange crisis, the basis for pure culture has been ruined. So it is time when active support for pure culture is needed.

In this connection, it is true that next year's cultural budget is lacking. Of the 1 trillion won of budget, budget for pure culture sector is limited to 20 billion won. The budget for basic cultural facilities is focused on building museum and cultural halls, and lacking in consideration on how to fill out the facilities after completion. It is worrisome that the current cultural policy is too focused on visible sectors, although the budget itself is still lacking.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism is proudly saying that the 1 trillion won of cultural budget reflects the firm will of the government toward cultural policy. However, it is urgent to work out a long-term policy goal and implement them one by one, prior to take pride in the budget itself.