“Korean culture is globalized”

Korea has undergone drastic changes in policy and status since the mid-20th century, Jung explained (see presentation file below). 

While rebuilding from the 1950-53 Korean War, arts policy in the Republic of Korea was mainly used internally as an instrument for strengthening national identity and thus economic growth under a series of authoritarian governments. It was not until the early 1990s – shortly after Korea’s first democratic elections – that there emerged a new focus on cultural welfare and globalization. This was followed by rapid growth in commercial cultural industries and greater public participation, finally culminating in a focus on cultural diplomacy, soft power, exports, and national image today.

“Now the Korean Wave [of pop culture] is very popular,” Jung said. “This means that Korean culture is globalized.” 

                

Byung Goo Choi (left), director of the Korean Cultural Center Washington, D.C., and Jung Kwang-ho

Cultural policy in Korea today is generally directed by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (similar to a department of the U.S. government), and to a lesser degree by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and other federal branches. Not unlike the U.S. system, Korea also has an array of more than 15 quasi-government arts-promoting organizations that are federally funded but at least partially privately managed, including the National Academy of Arts, Arts Council Korea (ARKO), the National Library of Korea, the Korean Culture and Information Service (which includes some overseas Korean cultural centers), and numerous arts schools and national museums with free public access. ARKO, like the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, is particularly active in providing grants for literature, visual, and performance arts, as well as international exchanges and residencies, and city or regional events and productions. 

Over the past five years, another priority of President Lee Myung-bak has been creating a positive, recognizable international cultural image for Korea, the main task of the Presidential Council on Nation Branding, which sets broad goals to be applied by other sub-groups. 

“Basically, Korean arts policy is top-down, and very centralized, which means the government has a strong role,” Jung said. This may change over time as Korea expands tax incentives for charitable giving by individuals and corporations, which Jung said are available but not as strong as in the U.S. system. 

Another key characteristic of Korea’s current arts policy is a focus on reducing the cultural divide through vouchers to underprivileged segments of society for performances and multimedia. This is indicative of a shift from supply-side subsidies to a user-based approach designed to meet community needs, Jung said. Korean grade and high schools – known for their traditionally rigorous academic focus, and where arts education was once rare, especially in rural areas – also now benefit from programs of the Korea Arts and Culture Education Service, which trains teachers, brings artists to schools, and aims to make arts education more standard.  

As for the global rise of the Korean Wave of pop music, dramas, and movies, known as hallyu in Korean, Jung credits the phenomenon to a combination of young Koreans who are internet and English savvy, unique cultural transmission pathways like Koreans’ fever for international education and embracing of international treaties, and an effective arts promotion policies flowing from Seoul.

 

China’s arts enlightenment

 

In China, arts policy is shaped by three levels of leadership, following a clear top-down structure, Gao said (see presentation file below). There are the top level policy makers in the People’s Congress, Party Congress, and State Council, mid-level officials in the Ministry of Culture and the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television, who apply guidance from above and decide regulations, and finally city and provincial governments, who use their own tax revenue for arts programs and also apply to mid-level organizations for funding. 

The work of implementing cultural policies in China involves two major aspects: enforcement and financial support. 

Enforcement, in short, means ensuring content is politically correct and appropriate. Gao recounted two cases: in 2008, when a memoir on China-US diplomatic history took 10 months to be approved for publication in China (one requirement was deleting details related to current political leaders, not due to criticism but because such information should first be made public by the party’s research office), and another in 2011, when Gao coordinated a performance by the George Mason University jazz band at the Shanghai City Council Hall, which took about a month to approve. 

“It used to take a longer time to [approve] bringing an international performance group than to publish a book, actually,” Gao said. “I can see a rapid development from 2008 [when] we needed 10 months for this waiting period and 2011 when it’s only one month.” In addition, the performance theme – jazz and arts diplomacy – could be considered a more sensitive subject for the image of China than diplomatic history, Gao added. 

“So...there are some big developments in the process of approval,” Gao said. “This progress actually reflects the huge transformation [in China] over the past 50 years.”

Gao acknowledges that Chinese censorship is still notorious, especially for foreign films shown in China. But he also says that the quotas, or limits, on foreign arts productions presented in China have increased dramatically, allowing more cultural imports each year. As policy progresses, he said, he expects censorship as a political tool to decline. 

The overall trend, however, is a focus on economic benefits over pure ideology, Gao said. 

“The political part, or ideology, is a major difference between China and... [the West or internationally, where arts support] is more of a balance between just culture and economic factors.”

    
Qing Gao

During China’s Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, political ideology was the only concern, Gao said. This was followed by what Gao calls a period of enlightenment from 1978 to 1983, when “artists, writers, and musicians started thinking of the true value of arts and culture, and to explore the humanity and its universal value.” Economic development has played an increasing role in China’s arts policies since then, Gao said, with Shanghai being the first city to launch a strategic plan that included developing the arts in 1985. 

“From 1992, [we saw an] acknowledgment of the contribution of arts to the modernization process, and that is also the time the economic factors played a major role.”

In 2001, the idea of entire cultural industries in China gained prominence. Since then, investment in the arts has continued to grow, as has China’s overall economy; from 2007 to 2011, the Chinese government invested 23 billion US dollars in cultural development, including more than $6 billion in 2011 alone. 

“That is the largest investment in Chinese history on cultural development,” Gao said. He notes, however, that this is still just 0.2 percent of the government’s total budget. The majority of this funding is also directed at individual counties and China’s underdeveloped Western region, Gao said, indicating the government’s desire to increase access to arts and protect local traditions. 

Moving ahead, Gao expects the arts in China to develop in several key areas: non-profit public services (free admission to galleries, libraries, and cultural spaces), tax exemptions to promote public involvement and investment in the arts (currently none of the 22 fully tax exempt charitable organizations in China are arts-related), establishing a National Arts Foundation similar to the US National Endowment for the Arts (until charitable donations pick up, however, its initial 0.3 billion investment over the next 5 years will come entirely from state lottery revenue), and growing popular cultural enterprises by encouraging Chinese artists of all types to work with international counterparts. 

“These cultural enterprises, as a major part of the...cultural industry, will open a new door in international directions.” 

While many Chinese artists have gained a higher profile worldwide, it is sometimes for the political pressures they face at home rather than their artistic merit alone, Gao acknowledged, saying he appreciates some artists’ commitment to social issues of equality, public education, and construction quality. 

“But the confrontation between individuals artists and authority, I predict that will increase in the future...” Gao said. “[Through] this whole enlightenment process, more and more citizens will be educated to play a role in national social development, and confrontation will happen...but that will help the policy makers to have the internal transformation of the policy making process.” Gao said he sees this as a positive. 

 

“A long history and tradition” in the United States

The decentralization in the U.S. system of arts support extends to all levels of government, Ojeda said ( see presentation file below), starting at the top: the United States does not have a Ministry of Culture or department that sets an overall arts policy for the many state and local organizations. Rather a host of agencies and institutions cooperate across federal, state, and local levels.  

“If you want to say we have a policy, it’s to not have a policy, or that we have many policies,” Ojeda said. “There is no one public agency that controls all the funding, and there’s no one agency that supports the majority of arts activities.”

At the federal level, there are many government agencies that fund arts and culture; major ones and their 2012 budgets include the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) ($146.2 million), National Endowment for the Humanities ($146.2 million), Institute of Museum and Library Services ($242.6 million), Corporation for Public Broadcasting ($420 million), Smithsonian Institution ($811.5 million), National Gallery of Art ($114.1 million), and the Kennedy Center ($36.8 million). In total, these agencies receive almost $2 billion annually (although not all of these agencies fund arts exclusively). Among them, NEA is the largest annual funder of the arts nationally. 

“The direct government support can often leverage other funding and complements funding for the arts  from the private sector.  It promotes building relationships and partnerships.” Ojeda said.

    
Pennie Ojeda (left), and questions from the audience

Strong private funding is another distinctive characteristic of arts support in the United States. In 2010, $13.3 billion was donated to arts and culture in the United States, part of nearly $300 billion in overall contributions to non-profit charitable organizations. On average, performing arts organizations and museums in the United States receive less than 7 percent of their budget from governments, the smallest portion of which is federally sourced, Ojeda said; of the remaining budget, more than half is from ticket sales and other income, and slightly less than half from direct contributions by individuals and corporations.

Those charitable donations are incentivized by another longstanding federal policy tool: tax exemptions. Individuals and corporations can contribute to arts organizations and other qualified charities to reduce the amount of taxes they pay, a policy that has been in effect since the early 20th century. 

“It’s a long history and tradition in this country,” Ojeda said. “It’s part of the social fabric.” 

In the cultural area, the benefit of the tax deduction to contributors is available only to the non-profit cultural organizations.  These organizations have a mission to serve the public good. Non-profits include most dance companies museums, orchestras, and specialty presses (such as those focused on poetry or translations). Organizations that are structured as  profit-making businesses, such as broadway theaters, commercial galleries, pop concerts, or Hollywood films cannot receive contributions that are tax deductible. There are about 115,000 cultural non-profits in United States today, giving contributors a wide range of choices. 

“[The non-profit cultural sector] makes up a huge part of arts activity in this country,” Ojeda said. “It’s very robust.” 

Federal agencies’ funding for arts, such as the grants and leaderships initiatives offered by NEA, are also generally limited to non-profits. Grants from NEA, an independent federal agency established in 1965, are further limited to U.S. non-profit organizations with three years of history, and almost all grants must be matched by the recipient 1-to-1.  According to legislative requirements, 60% of NEA’s program budget goes directly to arts projects and 40% goes to state arts agencies, which in turn fund more local qualifying projects. 

Some NEA-funded projects involve international components, but U.S. cultural diplomacy abroad is generally managed by the Department of State, which presents American culture and artists at embassies, American Centers, and in other contexts worldwide. “We’re basically a domestic agency,” Ojeda said, “so our purpose is to create conditions for the arts to thrive and to nurture support for the arts, but we’re not a major investor in international exchange.”

Making the artist viable

The challenge of making art a viable profession is an issue regardless of location. In the United States, NEA grant programs such as Our Town strive for “creative placemaking” as a way to stimulate local arts economies and incorporate artists more sustainably into communities.

In China, the debate is over how to balance the growing commercial interests of artists and companies with the growing need to give the public access to art – in a country where disposable income is generally much lower than in the United States or Korea. In other words, profit rights versus what Gao calls the “arts rights” of everyday people. Both needs are justified, he suggested. 

“This is a hot topic both internationally and in China,” Gao said. “Lots of scholars are spending their time and effort on that.”

    
Richard Kamenitzer (left), Associate Professor and Arts Management Program Director at 

George Mason University, and reception

Central to the discussion is the issue of copyrights for artistic creations. Gao said there is some progress on acknowleding and protecting artistic intellectual property in China, but that it’s a very slow process. 

“Culturally, in East Asian countries, copyrights [are often] regarded as a common resource. That means they are free to use,” Jung said, as a possible explanation of high piracy rates in the region. “But in recent times the Korean government has tried to enforce copyrights more and more strongly.” 

In the wake of the recent high profile, high stakes legal fight between Apple and Samsung over smart phone copyright infringement, Jung said, the Korean government and private companies now feel that copyright issues are of great importance, a lesson that may influence the rest of Asia. 

While the image of the struggling artist may never be relegated to the past, Ojeda is confident in the arts’ perennial ability to overcome adversity.

“It definitely is challenging for an arts organization to put together their budget in times of stress, but arts organizations and artists are phenomenally resilient, creative, and innovative about how they can keep their operations together.”

By Adam Wojciechowicz

Speaker Bios

Jung Kwang-ho is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Public Administration at Seoul National University. He has previously served in several government advising roles, including a committee on cultural education for the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, development of a cultural city project, the Civil Service Commission, Ministry of Environment, and Ministry of Public Administration and Security. His research includes public policy process and public leadership.

Qing Gao is Managing Director of the Confucius Institute and Assistant Professor of Arts Management at George Mason University, where he oversees the programming, finance, and operation to build the bridge between Mason and China. He also serves as Special Assistant to the Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts for China and Global Initiatives. He develops various collaborative relations between CVPA and Chinese leading arts institutions on philanthropy and arts management. Before joining Mason in 2010, he worked at US-China Policy Foundation – a think tank in DC. He conducted research on Sino-US cultural and political relations, and managed China Materials Service Center for four years.

Pennie Ojeda is Director of International Activities at the National Endowment for the Arts, an independent federal agency of the United States government. Her responsibilities include developing and managing international initiatives in cooperation with other government agencies or private institutions. Ms. Ojeda provides expertise and guidance on international cultural policy issues and does extensive liaison with the U.S. Department of State, with international organizations such as the Organization of American States, UNESCO, the International Federation of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies, and with foreign governments and the private sector to help foster international cultural engagement.

KORUS Forum, Nov. 30 2012 - Presentation by Jung Kwang-ho, Korea

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 KORUS Forum, Nov. 30 2012 - Presentation by Qing Gao, China<iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" src="http://www.scribd.com/embeds/118847498/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="undefined" id="doc_80617" frameborder="0" height="500" scrolling="no" width="100%"></iframe>

KORUS Forum, Nov. 30 2012 - Presentation by Pennie Ojeda, United States

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