The president of Cultural Heritage Administration , Chung Jae-suk, revealed her ambitions to promote Korean cultural heritage globally.
Chung’s newfound perspective of Korean culture transcends just preservation of Korean culture to include promotion in order to increase awareness of Korean cultural heritage. Preservation has its importance according to Chung, but it’s limiting in the amount of people that it reaches and promotion is the gateway to reach large amounts of people who might not even know they have an interest in Korean culture.
Although 70-80% of CHA’s budget is expended on preserving Korean cultural heritage, they plan to increase their budget on promotion through upcoming technology such as virtual reality and augmented reality to reach as many people as possible who show a slight interest in Korean culture whether they’re ethnically Korean or of a different ethnic group.
To move forward with promoting Korean culture through emerging technology, CHA has partnered with the Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to reach as many people domestically and internationally. This year alone, they have expended $3 million for creating content through VR and AR technology with an additional $1.8 million on scanning 3D models of Korean national treasures and world heritage sites.
CHA is also leveraging current technology and digital trends to increase awareness of Korean cultural heritage. They’ve leveraged YouTube and digital marketing to release videos that collectively surpasses millions of views and are looking into other digital opportunities to spark interest and awareness.
One idea is partnering with Korean celebrities who are willing to include aspects of Korean culture in their songs which Suga of BTS veiled as a solid marketing strategy after releasing a song called D-2 which increased the popularity of a Korean cultural heritage called “Daechwita”.
Another idea is working with Korean centric e-Commerce stores by providing content for stores to release to their visitors. For example, a Korean digital shop selling baby girl Hanboks for Dol and providing tips on throwing a Dol Party to increase the popularity of Doljabi in a Korean baby’s first birthday.
Younger people are the prioritized target group as they’re the ones most unfamiliar with Korean heritage in and out of Korea, and the future of Korean culture hinges on them.
CHA has been optimizing their current marketing assets to appeal to English speakers. They have started an initiative to correct grammatical and spelling errors on English signboards advertising Korean cultural heritage, release press releases in English, and provide English translations in their YouTube videos.
On top of increasing awareness of Korean cultural heritage, the CHA prepared to increase the number of foreign tourists and popularity of tour packages of Korean cultural heritage such as “Korea on Stage” but put this on pause due to COV19.
Among the damages of COV19 are restoration of Korean cultural centers in Southeast Asian countries and research on Korean cultural heritage in museums in Germany and Japan.
Furthermore, CHA planned to work with North Korea to list the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) as a cultural zone for ROK(South Korea) and DPROK(North Korean) in UNESCO’s list, but looks slim due to the increased tension between ROK and DPROK.
Still, Chung ambitiously believes it’s crucial to proceed with the listing. On June 9th, the CHA conducted its first field survey inside the DMZ after it’s planned joint listing publicized in the beginning of March.
Chung was appointed as head of the CHA in August 2018.