[Editorial] Gov't Must Take Lead in Protecting Cultural Diversity

It has always been nice to see, at the closing of APEC summits, various heads of state together wearing traditional clothing. You already wonder what kind of fashion the APEC leaders will put on display at the meeting next month in Busan. On Friday the United States, Australia, and New Zealand either opposed or abstained in the vote held on UNESCO's cultural diversity convention, but that event which shows off diverse cultural tradition will not be abandoned.

The arrival of UNESCO's cultural diversity convention is one of the most meaningful events of this century. The waves of globalization are turning the world into a single, uniform market. Spoken and written language, music, dance, drama, and even eating and drinking habits are becoming uniform. The result of work by the people of the world to fight the cultural-imperialist trend is this new cultural diversity pact. Just as the destruction of biological diversity by major capital interests threatens the world's ecosystem, the destruction of cultural diversity by major capital interests turns humans from creative entities into simple consumers. If the attack of the Hollywood movies had been neglected the seeds of Korean film, which are providing the people of the world with special imagination and experience, would have dried up long ago.

The Korean film community and culture industry was a model for the people around the world. Korea maintained its "screen quotas" in the face of reckless offensives from the US government and major capital interests. The Korean government, on the other hand, has been incapable of handling trade pressure from the US. Deputy Prime Minister for Finance and Economy Han Duck Soo and trade officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade have been calling for the "screen quotas" to be abandoned.

The US asserts that the UNESCO agreement is vague about its relationship with the rights and obligations stipulated by other treaties. The calculation it is making is that it should try to force its own interests in bilateral agreements. The advantage of the cultural diversity convention is that 154 nations have signed into it to protect basic culture, with only six countries voting against it or abstaining. The Korean government needs to get rid of the ambiguous approach it has assumed until now. It must state its intention to protect cultural diversity and put that into practice.

The Hankyoreh, 22 October 2005.

[Translations by Seoul Selection]