Enhancing the diversity of media
1. Media Diversity Monitoring
2.Indie film: Support for the organization of independent film festivals, production of independent films and screening of the films on cultural diversity
3.Development of webtoon (web-comics) sources: Projects to develop web-comics promoting cultural diversity
4. Indie music: Support for the indie music sector
1. The media diversity monitoring project is aimed at analyzing the level of diversity of the Korean broadcasting service (platform, channel and content), while providing data needed to formulate policies promoting diversity of local media. It also provides the industrial, academic and public sectors with information about the institutional measures to promote diversity of local media.
2. The indie films project includes support for the organization of indie film festivals, production of indie films and screening of cultural diversity films. All of these three programs seek to promote diversity of films by supporting production of indie and art films, and the screening of them.
3. Web-comics development project pursues diversity of comics with support for the production of children’s comics about cultural diversity and the national tradition of Korea to raise awareness of its historical value.
4. The support for indie music provides the opportunities to produce music content of diverse genres. It also discovers talented new musicians, thus strengthening the ecosystem and foundation of the music industry.
1. The project includes analysis of the characters in broadcasting programs (in terms of sex, sexual orientation, age, occupation, language, foreign language, disability, marriage, child care, etc); of the diversity of genres in program planning; of the diversity in producers of programs; of the diversity of channels on paid media platform; of the diversity of ownership of channels; and publication and distribution of the analysis results.
2. The project is divided into support for the organization of indie film festivals, the production of indie films and the screening of them. The state-financed Korean Film Council and the Association of Korean Independent Film & Video jointly organize the nation’s largest indie film festival. The support for indie films is allotted to 50 live-action movies both in feature length and short length, distributed on film or DVD format, with a budget of less than 400 million won. The films on cultural diversity are entitled to state subsidies for marketing expenses which ensures fair screening opportunities and distribution of Korean films of different formats.
3. The project is to publish and distribute children's comics, hold an international cartoonist contest, and produce and distribute comics of public brand.
4. The project is to support promising new talents, including indie or non-mainstream musicians, while assisting the organization of pop music concerts and festivals as well as the Golden Disk Award and other pop music awards.
1.It raises public awareness about the diversity of media by distributing (through news reports and public announcement) the monitoring results to policymakers, broadcasting service operators and the general public. It has also established cooperative relations with major foreign regulators and institutions concerned with media diversity (The International Conference on Promotion of Media Pluralism and Diversity in Seoul, November, 2017).
2. It contributes to the production of a virtuous circle by creating a stable filmmaking environment with support for the production of films diverse in content and format and with on-line and off-line distribution of them. It enhances the competitiveness and profile of Korean films as well as providing opportunities for the Korean audience to enjoy a variety of movies.
3. It is expected to expand diversity of comics’ ecosystem. The promotion of comics on cultural diversity provides the opportunities to create cartoons of diverse content and more jobs.
4. The diversity in the genres of popular music strengthens the competitiveness of music content while broadening and solidifying the basis for creativity.
1. 170,098 dollar (as of 2017)
2. 1,604,297 dollar (as of 2016)
3. 447,628 dollar (as of 2016)
4. Music: 7,251,567 dollar (as of 2016)
Starting with the selection of the indicators of media diversity in 2014, a pilot survey was conducted in 2015, the first primary survey in 2016 and the second primary survey in 2017. The complicated evaluation items to assess media diversity in the initial stage of monitoring were simplified and better organized. By holding international conference, it could establish cooperative ties with other relevant foreign institutions. However, as the analysis of the program content is still confined to quantitative measures, it needs to be complemented by deeper qualitative analysis.