Cultural Policy in South Korea

The control and promotion of culture have been bound up with politics in Korea to a surprising degree. This book traces the development of cultural policy in South Korea from Japanese colonial rule to the present day, highlighting this strong connection to wider government policy. Amongst many other subjects, the book discusses how the arts have largely relied on government financing; how the cultural industries engaged with the democratisation movement in the 1970s and 1980s; how more recent governments have promoted autonomy for the cultural sector; and how Korean arts have boomed in the twenty-first century, and have become an international phenomenon.