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STUDY ABROAD OPTIONS
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KOREANS SET UP NEW AGENCY TO FOCUS ON CONTENT CREATION The government will set up a new agency devoted to developing multimedia digital contents to be used as much-needed resources for a wide range of cultural industries, officials said.The "National Institute for Cultural Contents Promotion" will be established next month for the purposes of research, human resources training and financial assistance to private firms, officials said. "Since developing contents takes a long period of time before making profits, it may be in the best interest of private companies to take on the project," said Kim Han-gill in a press conference, explaining the need for the government to assume the responsibility of building cultural contents for public purposes. In this light, the national institute will invest in important commercial projects for developing a wide array of contents that can be utilized for various media industries such as animation, music, publishing, game software products, and the Internet. With a total of 473 billion in the pipeline by 2003 as seed money, the institute also is expected to perform as an industry fund to support small- and medium-sized ventures in IT and multimedia industries which face financial difficulties. Part of the institute’s fund will be used to develop digital contents for the new dimension of information technology, IMT-2000, in cooperation with private research centers for game and animation software products. In addition, the government unveiled a set of new plans intended to nurture Korea’s cultural contents industry with a total investment of 854 billion won over the next three years. The centerpiece of its policy priorities is to groom digital talents and create a more systematic environment for knowledge-driven industries."The demand for multimedia contents will soar as new media channels such as digital broadcasting come into being in the future in the course of technological advances," Culture-Tourism Minister Kim Han-gill during a press conference. For example, the full-fledged implementation of the IMT-2000 project would require more than 1,000 different mobile channels by 2005, he added. The number of Internet users will surge to account for nearly 70 percent of the total population in Korea, the ministry estimates.In order to provide the legal framework for these initiatives, the ministry will amend the Basic Law on Promotion of Cultural Industries to better accommodate the rapidly changing business environment in tandem with the on-going revolutions in IT and multimedia sectors, officials said. "National competitiveness hinges on how much one country is capable of offering quality contents, and we cannot afford to delay efforts to create value-added contents to be used for booming cultural industries," Kim said. (source: via Triumph of Content: TOASTERS THAT FORECAST THE WEATHER - WELCOME TO THE FUTURE Toasters that forecast the weather, necklaces that fence in wandering children, cell phones that practically sing and dance. A glimpse at the fanciful, freaky gadgets popping up in high-tech Hong Kong. (via The Big Change:
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This page last updated on January 28 2004.
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