As a fan of Kdrama, indelibly touched like so many others in 2002 who would stop in at some public place or restaurant in South Korea hooked on catching episodes of Winter Sonata while it was being broadcast, I turn to readers and fellow fans to help make sense of what is going on in South Korea. Now that Queen Seon Deok is over, there is SBS’s Don’t Hesitate to lend itself as an interpretive device for what has been going on in the arts, culture and media sectors this past year from the illegal firings of Arts Council Korea (ARKO) Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Kim Jung-heun to the attack on the Korean National University of the Arts. Is Lee Myung-bak’s administration representative of Jang Soo Hyun on a course of revenge, angered by the years of unacknowledged pain the conservative right suffered under the late president Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations? And, like the lead character, will its actions end up generating only more hurt for itself, while damaging its self-image?

The setting for this particular drama revolves around the international campaign that has been launched in an effort to save Mediact, a public media institution that also made its appearance in 2002 and emerged out of a collaborative proposal submitted by the Association of Korean Independent Film and Video (KIFV) to create an institution that could facilitate the realization of broadcast, cable and satellite obligations written into the 2000 broadcast legislation requiring the airing of viewer-produced content. The proposal was visionary in that it essentially provided public funding to support the realization of communication rights as a human right, but also in how it imagined a center could steward the development of the public media sector by providing support for local media center development, life-long media education, trainings, and research on appropriate media and technology policies. Currently, this very institution is currently under threat of being dismantled by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC) now under the authority of the Culture Ministry headed by Minister Yu, and protest is gathering to prevent the handover of its public media center facilities and contract to a conservative organization with inexperienced staff who have newly emerged on the scene.

Much of the protest tends to register deep concern due to Mediact’s considerable and positive contributions to the perception held by an international community about South Korea, and demands an immediate retraction and apology from KOFIC staff. It has also been remarked upon by many, as indicated by endorsements coming in from South Africa to Japan to nations in the EU, about how Mediact operates in a way that has been instructive about how not to silo off filmmakers, artists, media educators, media policy makers, and users away from each other but instead convene them together to create society-wide investments in the country‘s ability to develop a vibrant public media sector and lead internationally in media literacy, communication rights and democracy, and media policy implementation. There are some who go further to allege it is a mistake for KOFIC’s new chairman, Cho Hee-Moon, to run South Korea off course in this manner.

Mediact working in tandem with KIVF has supported efforts since its inception to ensure that Korean independent filmmaking has been well represented by its independent documentary filmmaking, punctuated by an early work by filmmaker and former KIVF Chairman Kim Dong-won’s Sanggye-dong Olympics (1988) and then joined this decade by his Repatriation (2004), Lee Chang-jae’s Between (2006), Kim Myeong-jun’s Our School (2007) and last year’s record-breaking documentary film Old Partner by Lee Chung-ryul. While last year was not an exception, its efforts became especially affirmed by the warm reception given internationally to Yang Ik-June’s Breathless. Even if someone has not benefited directly from having accessed the facilities, enrolled in a media workshop, attended a conference hosted by Mediact, or participated in any one of the international associations or convenings that staff from Mediact has represented South Korea in that range from the MacBride Round Table on Communication held in Seoul to phases of the World Summit on Information Society, anyone who has been privy to pick up a selection from the Mediact DVD collection of independent documentary and experimental works from South Korea can at least attest to this.

Finally, some others who are hearing about KOFIC’s decision to shutdown Mediact, a decision that follows the closure of IndieSpace, Seoul’s dedicated venue to screen independent films in December, offer the criticism that perhaps misreads the direction of KOFIC’s leadership and links it with a commercial overinvestment in prolonging or renewing the exportation of Hallyu, Korean new wave and KDramas. These same critics underscore that South Korea’s position relative to cultural production will always be punctuated by the remarkable content of the independent films produced in the past decade. I do not entirely disagree, however, the situation also seems marked by a partisan reversal and as the latter episodes in the Kdrama Don’t Hesitate spoken through the character of Han Tae Woo seem to suggest, rather than give in to vengeance, perhaps Chairman Cho Hee-Moon and Minister Yu should proceed in a different way. In the meantime, I want to stand up for both independent filmmaking and popular culture, and suggest that what has been distinguishable about South Korea is how wide its horizon in media and cultural production and communication rights became, and how alarmingly narrow it is now becoming.

A press conference organized by a voluntary group of Mediact members, independent filmmakers, and media education teachers will be held in front of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in Seoul, Jan. 29.

Ends.

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Petition to save Mediact

Mediact, an important resource for media education and activism is under threat. To read more about it in english see this petition page. 

http://www.gopetition.com/online/33662.html

We now join those concerned over the regression of democracy in South Korea that has now taken the form of an attack on Mediact, South Korea’s first public media center that has since its founding represented South Korea internationally as a leader in communication rights and democracy, media literacy, intellectual property rights, and public interest media.

Since 2002, Mediact has stewarded a contract to support independent film and video makers, media policy development, lifelong media education and public access. For seven years, it has provided an infrastructure focusing on the potential of creating a public media sector based on both shifting technological possibilities of access to the media and ongoing political democratization processes taking place in South Korea. 

Mediact’s facilities are funded by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), what is supposed to be an autonomous organization funded by the central government to promote Korean cinema within the country and overseas, and an independent activist organization managed by the Association of Korean Independent Film & Video (KIFV). We are highly alarmed by the new KOFIC Chairman's recent decision to dismantle Mediact and force its staff to resign as of February 1.

As Mediact’s counterparts in the international community, we have been long inspired by Mediact’s visionary leadership in the areas of media policy, media education, media production and communication rights. We, the undersigned, urge the government of President Lee Myung-bak to recognize its responsibility for the democracy that has regressed and reorient itself as a government that respects the people's sovereignty and South Korea's continued leadership in media and communication rights. We ask KOFIC together with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to reverse this decision immediately.