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| President Park Geun-hye attends a meeting with ministers of education, labor, welfare, environment and gender equality on ways to enhance people's livelihoods at Cheong Wa Dae, Wednesday. / Yonhap |
By Kwon Mee-yoo
The sports community has been concerned about a lack of attention to sports issues by the Park Geun-hye administration, particularly after a major ministry reshuffle in October 2014 that undermined the status of sports affairs within the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
Sports were hardly mentioned at the ministry's annual briefing at Cheong Wa Dae about the its key project for the new year, Thursday.
A 15-page report released to the press after the briefing did not contain any substantial sports plans, while focusing heavily on cultural issues. The only sports-related plan was promoting "sports for all" through opening school gym after hours and creating a sports-for-all portal to provide related information.
A top sports official at the ministry said that they needed to prepare a report around that theme "happiness for the people."
"Sports for all was relevant to the theme of the briefing, and thus included at the New Year report," Sports Policy Bureau head Woo Sang-il. "We have a variety of other tasks going on to promote sports," Woo said. "The ministry supports the the preparation of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games as well as raising a 40 billion won ($37 million) fund to invigorate the sports industry."
The key message of the ministry report was creating a nation symbol and brand within this year, while expanding "hallyu," or the Korean wave.
The foremost task of the culture ministry is to build the national symbol and brand. Korea has world's 13th largest economy in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), but ranked 27th for its country brand, according to the Anholt-Gfk Roper Nation Brands Index.
The ministry aims to develop a national brand based on Korean moral culture and traditional values, including Arirang the song, taekwondo, kimchi, hangeul and humanitarian spirit. Korea has slogans such as "Dynamic Korea" and "Imagine Your Korea" in promoting the country for tourism, but the national branding covers a wider range including the national symbol and government agency's logos.
The ministry also recognizes culture as the new spearhead in expanding economic territory. Preivously, hallyu was centered on popular culture such as K-pop and K-drama, but it will encompass more varieties of Korean culture for the next stage.
The ministry will launch a new public and private joint task force for hallyu in March. It will be a control tower for hallyu overall, combining culture, tourism and state-of-the-art technologies to secure sustainability of hallyu in long term.
The ministry will also nurture the contents industry by raising fund for story, music and webtoon. The Contents Korea Lab will support young creators to establish their own business from planning to distributing their ideas.
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