Culture Industry Output Takes 2.5% of GDP
By Lee Hyo-sik
Staff Reporter
South Korea's movie, music and other culture-related industries lag behind those of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member economies, largely because of the nation's rampant illegal reproduction of cultural content, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK) Tuesday.
Korea's culture industry's output accounted for 2.5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006, substantially lower than Britain's 7.6 percent, Japan's 5.9 percent and the United States' 5.5 percent. Among household expenditure, spending on various cultural and leisure activities accounted for 3.7 percent of the GDP, also sharply lower than the OECD average of 5.1 percent.
Cultural contents include books, magazines, dramas, films, music, and other print, visual and audio media.
Among OECD members, only Mexico, Ireland and Luxemburg lagged behind Korea in the size of their culture industries.
``Koreans may think that they have a globally competitive culture industry because locally produced dramas and movies have been popular in Asia over the past few years. But in reality, the overall industry is underdeveloped, compared to those of advanced countries, and has a lot of catching-up to do,'' a BOK official pointed out.
He said the world's 13th largest economy has a competitive edge only in online game and TV programs, stressing the nation should expand investments to produce more advanced cultural content, and nurture graphic designers and other industry professionals.
``But above all, the widespread illegal copying of cultural content here is the largest obstacle facing Korea's culture industry. Unless the nation strengthens the protection of copyright, no one would be willing to put money into developing value-added cultural content,'' the official stressed.
Holders of copyright on movies and other cultural content were estimated to have incurred losses amounting to two trillion won in 2006, with the market size of illegal reproduction of cultural products reaching over 4 trillion won.
The culture and leisure industry generates between 22 and 25 jobs per additional one billion won of sales, substantially higher than the manufacturing sector's 10 jobs, the central bank said.