A Study on Legal System regarding Traditional Culture Industry of the Republic of Korea

Traditional culture could be succeeded or cut off depending on choices of the society’s members who enjoy that culture. It will not be no longer traditional culture if that culture is not and will not appreciated by current and future members of that society, even though that culture had been highly appreciated and enjoyed by past members of that society. That culture could be perished if members of that society do not cherish the value of that culture any more. However, if that culture had been cut off by artificial interruption of outsiders, some ways must be studied to discover, to preserve and to utilize the value of that traditional culture for next generations of that society.This paper studies the trends of laws and policies of the Republic of Korea regarding the traditional culture industry. The viewpoints of the society regarding traditional culture industry could be reviewed as the laws are registered consensus of members of that society. And the policies of the government are important ways to discover, to preserve and to utilize the value of culture to execute with governmental authority. Tradition has been set up naturally by life styles through historical and social standard norms and natural environment. This paper defines the chronologic time of traditional cultural industry by modern times and the before.The Cultural Heritage Protection Act, legislated in 1962, emphasized the protection of the cultural properties. The Cultural Heritage Protection Fund Act, legislated in 2009, is also a law to preserve and protect the cultural properties. In 2011, the scope of the intangible cultural heritage was extended from the area of special experts to the area of mass public activities, such as ‘play’ and ‘ceremony’. In 2014, through the amendment of The Cultural Heritage Protection Act, legal grounds were set up for cultural properties utilization and business opportunities. The Intangible Cultural Heritage Preservation and Promotion Act, legislated in 2015 and being executed in 2016, was split from The Cultural Heritage Protection Act. By this split of the laws, it is possible to respond to the demands of international society, such as UNESCO. Aslo, The Cultural Heritage Protection Act extended the scope of intangible cultural heritage wider. New definition of the intangible cultural heritage includes (a) traditional performance and arts (b) traditional skills about craft and art works (c) traditional knowledge about oriental medicine, agriculture and fishery (d) oral tradition and expression (e) traditional living habits including food, clothing, and shelter (f) civil ceremony including folk religion (g) traditional play, festival, accomplishments and martial arts. The Intangible Cultural Heritage Preservation and Promotion Act makes it available to establish and operate ‘Traditional Craft Bank’ which can buy, rent and display the traditional crafts created by traditional masters. Also, it encourages government to promote traditional performance and traditional arts for display and marketing activities overseas through the cooperation with international organizations and other countries.Even though craft cultural industry is one of the highly value-added business as it could be melded with other industries, the business activities of traditional craft cultural industry were not strongly supported and encouraged by the law. The Craft Cultural Industry Promotion Act, legislated in 2015, made it possible to execute promotional policy for melding tradition and modern, grafting arts onto business legally. The Craft Cultural Industry Promotion Act encourages central and regional governments to make comprehensive plans for a craft cultural industry promotion including research and study for a craft cultural industry promotion, business foundation and production aid, infrastructure expansion and sales distribution vitalizations. This Act requires government (a) providing fund loan to business founders for their sustainable growth (b) designating institutes and/or colleges as a special training institutes and subsidizing some or all of their expenses to train professional experts (c) designating institutes to manage craft producing technology studies of raw materials and substitute materials for craft production (d) promoting sale activities including joint purchasing and joint marketing (e) designating ‘outstanding craft’ and providing benefits of branding, display, investment arrangement, overseas expansion, collaboration with other cultural contents.Even though the policy and legal amendment as well as new legislation of Korean government drive the traditional cultural business encouraged, some questions are brought up when reviewing the process and the results of those efforts. Korean government and private sectors should communicate to each other with sincere attitudes to develop concrete practical policies for traditional culture industry which can generate more economical profits and provide more values to the public.