Gov`t Boosts the Culture Industry

Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT) decided to nurture the ``Culture contents industry`` and digitalization of culture contents. For this reason, MCT remodeled its system by creating the culture-contents promotion department to help more efficiently the culture content industry.

In the new department, there would be no recruiting of additional people but, through internal reorganization, the department that has 11 employees, including a manager who will take charge of the culture content industry.

Jin-Ryong Ryu, the director of Culture Industry Bureau said, ``There will be an explosive amount of demand for high quality contents because of the great increase in number of the internet users, beginning with the digital satellite television, and the commercialization of IMT-2000.`` ``To secure the high quality culture content is necessary for us to be a strong knowledge oriented country.`` he added.

Consequently, the department plans to support culture content digitalization process, development of specialized human resource, technology development, and circulation system improvement.

MCT also opened a cyberspace-museum, the total information system of national heritage, (www.heritage.co.kr) and decided to build a cyberspace Hangul (Korean alphabet) museum.

The cyberspace Hangul museum for which 3.6 billion won will be spent by 2005 plans to establish a database of Hunminjungum Haeryebon and Yongbiochunga, a Korean old archives.

In particular, the cyberspace Hangul museum will show the principle of Hunminjungum, a history of Hunminjungum compilation, and an expansion history of Hangul using 3-D graphics.

In addition, through digitalization of various resources such as ancient Hangul, modern Hangul, logotypes, hanging boards, genealogies, grave-stones, and Braille points, the ministry plans to show the various types of Hangul fonts and cultural history of Hangul usage. The cyberspace museum is also to develop a historical and cultural program to overcome the differences between North and South Korean language, globalize the languages, and encourage the identity of Korean diasporas not only by collecting resources, but by featuring a future presentation hall.

As they revealed as one of this year’s main projects, MCT also decided to inaugurate Korea@Museum, a company specializing in culture content development by the first half of this year. The company whose capital expects to be 100 billion won is initially focusing on digitalization of both tangible and intangible cultural properties and their business area will be expanded to the movie and animation.

Kim Cha-Su kimcs@donga.com