Gov't to expand support for traditional culture-related startups led by youth

SEOUL, April 11 (Yonhap) -- The culture ministry plans to expand its support for youth starting up their own businesses using traditional Korean culture, while increasing the number of state-run Korean Cultural Centers abroad to 37 by 2027, officials said Tuesday.

The plan was part of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism's new five-year basic plan to promote Korean culture.

Under the plan, the government will render financial support to more than 300 traditional culture-related startups led by young people by 2027 with the number of teams receiving the support varying depending on the stage of their growth.

The government will increase the number of overseas Korean Cultural Centers from the current 33 to 37 by that year and continue to expand the global network of the King Sejong Institute, a government-sponsored Korean language education organization, from 244 language centers in 84 countries as of last year.

To help roll out South Korea's own artificial intelligence ChatGPT-style product, the government will set up a medium- and long-term plan to build a high-quality Korean language corpus of up to 1 billion word segments by the target year.

The government also plans to cooperate with overseas art institutions to help Korean fine artists make inroads into foreign markets.

As part of efforts to lay the groundwork for sustainable international cultural exchanges, the government will open a national museum of world letters in Incheon's Songdo district, about 27 kilometers west of Seoul, in the first half of this year. The museum will serve as the country's hub of research on world letters, according to officials.

"The government will push for policies to make Korea a free, fair and culturally attractive country in an organized manner," Minister Park Bo-gyoon was quoted as saying in a press release.

sshim@yna.co.kr
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