![\"Kim](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/news-p.v1.20260518.4c5d4786628d4cca9dc803a0858eb069_P1.jpg\"\/ "\\"Korea")
Kim Jung-sup, professor of cultural industry and arts at Sungshin Women’s University, discusses ways to sustain K-culture during an interview with Seoul Economic Daily on the 28th. Photo by Oh Seung-hyun<\/p>\nKim Jung-sup, professor of cultural industry and arts at Sungshin Women’s University, discusses ways to sustain K-culture during an interview with Seoul Economic Daily on the 28th. Photo by Oh Seung-hyun<\/p>\n
“K-culture has hit an obstacle: dependence on foreign capital such as Netflix. We must urgently establish a virtuous cycle that reinvests content earnings back into K-culture.”<\/p>\n
Kim Jung-seop, professor of cultural industry and arts at Sungshin Women’s University, who was recently appointed as the inaugural chairman of the Global K-Culture Economy Forum (GKCEF), emphasized in an interview with Seoul Economic Daily on the 28th that Korea must hasten the introduction of a cultural finance system for K-culture. “The future of K-content can only be secured by moving away from government subsidies and short-term, small-scale support, and actively bringing in private investment,” Kim said. “We need measures including the strict crackdown on unfair trade, horizontal regulation between media and platforms, securing intellectual property (IP) rights, and introducing cultural finance that pursues industrial promotion.”<\/p>\n
Launched on the 6th of this month, the Global K-Culture Economy Forum is Korea’s first culture-finance convergence platform, established to lay the foundation for sustainable growth in cultural industries including games, dramas, music, and films. It was launched with the aim of systematically supporting K-culture’s vitalization and sustained growth through cooperation among the public, private, industrial, and academic sectors. A former newspaper reporter, Kim is a cultural industry and policy expert who became the first in Korea to earn a doctorate on K-culture, and previously served as an expert advisor on the State Affairs Planning Committee under the Lee Jae-myung administration. “Cultural arts and economic-financial figures came together to form the forum to address the situation where foreign platforms are monopolizing nearly all profits based on their dominance,” Kim said, explaining the background of the launch.<\/p>\n
Existing content support has been centered on small-scale assistance from production companies or the government. Kim proposed converting this into cultural finance and structuring it so that large-scale capital flows in. Cultural finance is a collective investment method that applies risk-sharing structures proven in financial markets \u2014 such as project financing (PF) or venture investment \u2014 to the cultural industry. Under this structure, content production entities such as production companies, broadcasters, and platform companies participate as strategic investors, receiving IP rights and subordinated dividends, while individuals, institutions, and foreign investors participate as financial investors, earning preferred dividends. “With investment funds flowing in through the cultural finance system, creators and producers can focus on production with stability, and domestic platforms can also enhance their competitiveness in terms of content supply chains,” Kim said. “If a portion of the profits is returned to support basic arts and small and independent creators, it can also contribute to broadening the base of culture and arts.”<\/p>\n
He forecast that if cultural finance is activated, a significant portion of the 4,000 trillion won in market liquidity will flow in. “There is currently abundant liquidity in the market,” he said. “Introducing a box-office prediction index for cultural funds and an investment review system would maximize their investment appeal.”<\/p>\n
Kim also proposed the need to nurture domestic platforms to compete with global over-the-top (OTT) services. He believes that ad-supported free streaming (FAST) services launched by Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics could serve as alternatives. Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics operate the FAST services ‘Samsung TV Plus’ and ‘LG Channels,’ respectively. “In March this year, BTS’s comeback concert was broadcast live worldwide through Netflix,” Kim said. “Instead of global OTTs that face constant controversies over platform revenue structures and other issues, we need to actively utilize Samsung TV Plus and LG Channels.” He added, “Using FAST services, domestic content can easily gain opportunities to enter overseas markets, and K-content can secure a new growth engine in the global market.”<\/p>\n
Kim also foresaw the unlimited expansion potential of K-culture, which is spreading across culture as a whole, including K-pop, K-drama, and K-food. “Korean artists possess a profound sixth sense and creativity that captivates the emotions of people around the world,” he said. “Now the era of ‘K-Everything’ is coming.” He predicted that K-pop, including BTS, will continue to play a major role in the expansion of K-culture. Kim also authored the cultural arts book ‘The Worldview of BTS’ last year. “BTS’s music is a multilayered communication language condensing the refined emotions and reflective sensibilities of contemporaries that encompass the individual, community, and society,” Kim said. “BTS will continue to advance as friends sharing hearts with people around the world, as comforters who console them at the same eye level, and further as apostles of peace resolving discord and conflict in various places.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kim Jung-sup, professor of cultural industry and arts at Sungshin Women’s University, discusses ways to sustain K-culture during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1598,23867,23868,4228,4230,199,23869,2458,23870,12690],"class_list":["post-39285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-bts","tag-cultural-finance","tag-fast-services","tag-global-k-culture-economy-forum","tag-k-content","tag-k-culture","tag-kim-jung-seop","tag-lg-channels","tag-netflix-dependence","tag-samsung-tv-plus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}