Cultural enrichment: can goverment's free admission program entice more people to cultural venues?

By Do Je-hae

• Published Mar 6, 2014 5:07 PM KST
• Updated Mar 6, 2014 5:07 PM KST

Confusion grows over culture promotion plans

By Do Je-hae

President Park Geun-hye has spent every last Wednesday of the past two months doing something she normally doesn’t do — going to the cinema or theater.

In January, she was seen with her aides watching the animation comedy “The Nut Job,” and last month “In Search of Kim Jong-Wook,” a musical based on a script by a Korea National University of Arts student.

The two occasions were the president’s manifestation of support for her own policy to incorporate more cultural activity into people’s daily lives. Since her arrival in Cheong Wa Dae, Park has repeatedly spread her message of “cultural enrichment,” a term that has become one of the key items of her administration’s agenda.

Translated into Korean, the term sounds like something that belonged to the 1970s. But all of a sudden, the outdated jargon is everywhere, particularly in press releases from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and its affiliated agencies, not to mention major cultural establishments such as Seoul Arts Center.

What exactly does “cultural enrichment” mean and how does Park intend to achieve it?

Simply put, the message is; Korean people need to go to the movies, attend concerts and exhibitions on a more regular basis, and help spur the culture industry’s growth.

Park established the Presidential Committee on Cultural Enrichment in July 2013, directing it to come up with new ideas for supporting a sector she considers fundamentally important to elevating the quality of life and boosting the nation’s economy. The committee hadn’t really done anything significant except host a series of seminars in various parts of the country, but its role became clearer to the public when it announced a monthly “Culture Wednesday” plan at the end of last year.

The Culture Wednesday is a national campaign to make culture a daily activity through offering free admission or discount rates at major venues around the country, including museums, palaces, theaters and concert halls, on the last Wednesday of every month.

“Culture has helped me through some tough times in the past. With the belief that it can renew hope and the energy of the people, I will try to make time each month for some sort of cultural activity,” Park said after “The Nut Job” screening.

The committee insists that the Culture Wednesday campaign reflects the consensus of experts it has gathered since its establishment.

“Since the committee was founded in July last year, we traveled to various parts of the country to identify major issues and problems in culture and collect ideas on how to make cultural experiences a bigger part of our daily lives,” said committee Chairman Kim Dong-ho.

The admission rate at some facilities did go up after the implementation of Culture Wednesday in January.

Attendance rate at the movie chain CGV on Feb.26 was up 85.3 percent compared to that of the previous Wednesday. Movies starting between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. at large cinema chains Megabox, CJ CGV and Lotte Cinema are priced at 5,000 won per person, down from the usual 8,000 won.

State-run facilities such as Seoul Arts Center and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art also recorded a noticeable attendance increase. At the Hangaram Museum at Seoul Arts Center, 4,992 people attended on Feb. 26 — 1,510 more than the previous day, and 2,412 more than the last Wednesday of January.

At this point, it is too early to tell if the campaign is actually fulfilling its purpose. February is vacation season for students, so free admission or discounts may not be the only reason for the growth in the number of theater and museum visitors.

The campaign is still in the beginning stages, so there have been unpleasant cases of confusion amongst the establishment and the visitors. One the website of Culture Wednesday run by the ministry, some people have voiced their complaints.

In one instance, a woman in Suwon visited a museum in her area with the notion she would be granted free admission on account of the campaign, but was let down when an uninformed museum official turned her away, saying he had never heard of such benefits. Later, the museum offered her an apology and put up a sign about its participation in the Culture Wednesday initiative.

In theory, the plan sounds good enough. With free admission or cheaper tickets, it would be reasonable, from the policymakers’ point of view, to attract more people to the theaters and museums.

But how much of the working population have the time to take themselves and their families out to an evening of culture on a week night? Lee Jeong-ho, a father of two pre-school children in his mid-30s, was not too keen on the free Wednesday plan.

“I get off work late, around 9:00 p.m., and my children take piano lessons in the evening. It’s not a question of money, but time that limits cultural activities in our family,” Lee said.

Another major problem of the campaign seems to be that many people are completely unaware that such benefits even exist.

One of the reasons that such policies go unnoticed is due to the lack of promotional activities that used to be carried out by organizations like the Government Information Agency (GIA).

The GIA served as leader for raising public awareness of useful policies, but the agency was abolished a few years ago for political reasons.

Park wants everyone, regardless of income, to be a part of her campaign for cultural enrichment. In February, her administration announced a program to provide funds for cultural activities for the underprivileged.

People who are eligible must sign up at the

www.munhwanuricard.kr

, a site run by the ministry. But the ministry had to issue an apology last week when the website failed to work properly due to an overflow of applications and angry complaints from confused users.