Future creative ministry awkwardly named

By Jun Ji-hye

Public reactions to the tentatively named Ministry of Future Creative Science include “strange,” “awkward” and “too vague.”

Many say that the word future in the name of a ministry is just too abstract. The incoming administration has yet to fix the official title but it is unlikely to be much too different as the Korean name will be translated literally.

A foreign correspondent based in Seoul said, “Strictly speaking, I feel strange with some words in the name of the ministry. It is vague and also trying to be trendy in some way.”

He said it feels to him like a marketing language as well.

“The name sounds like something an expensive PR company would come up with.”

All things considered, he said, “It sounds like a department that can do everything or do nothing.”

He added the Ministry of Knowledge Economy sounds strange as well.

A British English teacher working in Korea, identified only as Phil agreed in part with the reporter.

“Those names can sound odd. I am not really able to know what the ministry does. It is hard to grasp what they do as it is ambiguous,” he said, adding that a word like creativity could have religious connotations as well.

Dan Rovell, a native English teacher at Dangdong Middle School in Gyeonggi Province said, “In English, that's a very strange name. I think most English countries would simply call it the Ministry of Research or Ministry of Science and Technology or something like that.”

Since President-elect Park Geun-hye announced her government retooling plans last month, the ministry has been at the center of the controversy.

Many experts have raised concerns about concentrating too much power into a single body.

Shim Ik-sup, professor at the department of public administration at Dongguk University said, “When naming government machinery, studies in public administration recommend using concrete words such as foreign affairs or education, not abstract words.”

The professor pointed out the risk of the ministry becoming a giant entity has existed from the beginning because of its vague name.

According to Park’s transition team, the ministry will take charge of making policies related to scientific research and development. It will also cope with affairs related to information and communications technology and digital content as well as absorbing the postal administration.

Above all, moving the functions of formulating broadcasting promotion policy from the Korea Communications Commission to the ministry is an issue that the ruling and the opposition parties have clashed over.

The main opposition Democratic United Party is claiming the envisioned plan could harm the fairness of broadcasting.