Making creative industries policy in the real world: differing configurations of the culture-market-state nexus in the UK and South Korea

Hye-Kyung Lee*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)
864 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This paper compares creative (content) industries policies in the UK and South Korea, highlighting the coevality in their development. Seeing them as ‘industrial policies’, it focuses on how state intervention is justified and why a certain set of policy options have been chosen. The UK policy-makers prefer passive and decentralised roles of the state that addresses market failures via generic and horizontal policies. Meanwhile, Koreans have consistently believed in the strong, resourceful and ambitious state in developing centralised, sector-specific policies for cultural industries. While demonstrating two contrasting approaches to the nation state’s management of cultural turn in the economy, both cases seem to present a ‘paradox’. Despite its neoliberal undertone, the horizontal and fused approach taken by the UK’s creative industries policy engenders some space for ‘cultural’ policy. On the contrary, the non-liberal and state-driven content industries policy in Korea has shown a stronger tendency of cultural commodification.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)544-560
JournalInternational journal of cultural policy
Volume26
Issue number4
Early online date26 Feb 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 6 Jun 2020

Keywords

  • content industries
  • creative economy
  • creative industries
  • cultural industries
  • industrial policy
  • Korean cultural policy
  • UK cultural policy

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