Writer | Kim Seongha

During the 20th century, “development,” which was pursued by many countries, referred to “economic growth” in most cases. Consequently, citizens’ quality of life or happiness were neglected. Under these circumstances, people have gradually agreed that not only economic development but also quality of life must be the goal of development. As the UN’s SDSN (Sustainable Development Solution Network) emphasized the development of a country and society requires not only economic development but also quality of life and happiness, it began to publish World Happiness Report every year from 2012. In the 2017 Report, Korea ranks 55th among the 155 countries and 29th among the 35 OECD member countries. Meanwhile, the OECD’s 2016 BLI (Better Life Index) explains that Korea ranks 31st among the 38 countries in terms of general satisfaction with life; Korea’s rate was 5.8, which was lower than the OECD average of 6.5. Moreover, in work-life balance Korea ranked 36th in terms of the percentage of those working over 50 hours a week: Korea’s result was 23.1 percent, which is higher than the OECD average of 13.0 percent. These results show that Koreans spend more time on work than on rest, leisure and cultural activities to enrich their life. Meanwhile, asked if the have anyone to count on when there are difficulties in a community, 88.0 percent of the OECD countries’ citizens answered “yes” on average while only 75.8 percent of Koreans gave the positive answer, which makes Korea rank 37th.

In other words, despite Korea’s rapid economic growth, the country’s quality of life has been neglected. Consequently, Koreans’ solidarity or community spirit has been weakened significantly. This warns us that such weakened solidarity may lead to the collapse of the overall community. It is thus time for Korean society to come up with plans to improve citizens’ quality of life and happiness rather than just pursuing economic growth.

As mentioned before, the UN’s SDSN has announced the World Happiness Report every year since 2012, regarding quality of life or happiness as an important element of development in addition to economic growth. However, Bhutan already published the Gross National Happiness Index in 2008, 2010 and 2015. The term GNH (Gross National Happiness) began to be used officially for the first time in 1979 as Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the king of Bhutan, said, “We don’t believe in GNP (Gross National Product). GNH is more important.” Bhutan’s GNH of 2015 was 0.756 which is higher than 0.743 of 2010. In particular, the percentage of Bhutan;s citizens who answered that they are “extensively happy” or “deeply happy” also rose from 40.9 percent in 2010 to 43.4 percent in 2015.

As the OECD’s BLI makes it clear, Korean society focuses more on economic growth than on quality of life. In this regard, it would be very meaningful for Koreans society to reflect on the fact that the UN’s SDSN and Bhutan find the meaning of economic development in quality of life or happiness. A society or country pursues “development” in order to improve citizens’ quality of life ultimately. Thus, “development” that only pursues economic growth without considering quality of life couldn’t be able to be regarded as the true “development.” Pointing out the limit of the “development” confined to economic growth, the UN announced that culture would be the purpose of development in the 21st century by establishing the UNESCO -led World Decade for Cultural Development 1988-1997. By doing so, the UN attempted to expand the world’s discourse of “development” to the concept of culture. Javier Perez de Cuellar, former president of the World Commission on Culture and Development, said, “Efforts to achieve development failed mostly because development projects underestimated the importance of human elements (a spider web-like network of relationships, belief, value and motives).”

If Koreans’ quality of life remains in the low ranks in the OECD’s BLI compared to other countries because they focused only on economic growth for development, it is time for Korean society to newly regard culture as the purpose of development, not as its tool. Korea’s Basic Culture Act, which was enacted in 2013, could be interpreted as the country’s efforts to change the concept of culture from a secondary tool of development to its center. Article 1 (Objective) of the Act speficies that the objective of the act is to “make culture improve quality of life and play an important role in the development of the country and society.” By emphasizing the importance of improving quality of life and the role of culture, the Act shows us Korea’s paradigm shift regarding the development of Korean society. Such a change forms a basis for Korean society to apply the concept and philosophy of the UN’s SDSN, Bhutan’s emphasis of happiness and the UNESCO -led World Decade for Cultural Development.

The Basic Culture Act specifies that cultural impact assessment is specified as the obligation of the government and local governments. Such assessment predicts or analyzes a given policy’s cultural impacts on citizens’ quality of life, thus improving the value of the policy and spreading cultural value in entire society. The assessment system analyzes and assesses the direct and indirect impacts of a policy or plan on citizens’ life from a cultural perspective. The system then makes suggestions regarding the improvements to make. In short, it is a kind of cultural consulting. In the 2017 Guidelines on Cultural Impact Assessment, each of the assessment items (basic cultural right, cultural identity and cultural development) has an assessment indicator and detailed indicators. The assessment items and indicators of cultural impact assessment allow the plans and policies of the government and local governments to shift its focus from administration-focused efficiency to each citizen’s quality of life. This means that policies and plans regarding culture and other fields, which have been established and implemented by the central government or experts will be led by each citizen. Such a paradigm shift expands democracy of culture, in which each citizen receives culture from experts’ perspective, to cultural democracy, in which each citizen actively creates, produces, consumes and shares a variety of cultural activities.

In the 1980’s, Jack Lang, French Minister of Culture of the Mitterrand government, attempted to realize cultural democracy on the basis of France’s first Minister of Culture André Marleaux, Jacques Duhamel’s cultural development and the decentralization of culture that started after the country’s May 1968 events. In other words, Lang wanted to make a cultural environment where not only a privileged few but also everyone can engage in creative activities in daily life. In his speech on November 17, 1981 at the National Assembly, Jack Lang suggested France’s cultural policy direction by summarizing the country’s cultural policy in two words: creation and decentralization. France’s cultural policy, which started with André Marleaux, shows the country’s development from democracy of culture to cultural democracy. What is the most important is to reject uniform culture that is controlled by the central government as well as arts or culture that belongs to a certain group of people. Instead, the concept of “culture” includes design, costume, cartoons, street art and jazz to become part of daily life. In short, cultural democracy cannot be led by the central government. Led by different regions, any citizen has the right and opportunities to create in different fields. Consequently, cultural impact assessment, whose major assessment items are the basic cultural right, cultural identity and cultural development, must pursue and is pursuing creation and decentralization (core elements of cultural democracy), as it is made clear in France’s cultural policy.

The 2017 Guidelines on Cultural Impact Assessment specify that local governments can carry out cultural impact assessment of their policies and plans in two ways: professional assessment or internal assessment. As for professional assessment, a local government applies for a public contest of cultural impact assessment and if it is selected, a professional institution carries out assessment. In the case of internal assessment, a local government’s internal organization in charge of a given policy or plan selects those to be assessed. A civil servant in charge of the policy or plan then fills in a checklist-type assessment report provided by Korea Culture & Tourism Institute. He or she submits the report to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. This second method of assessment is similar to internal gender impact assessment (also using a check list).

A local government may use either professional or internal assessment. However, the professional one requires application to the public contest and selection. For internal assessment, a specific pilot project has not been planned yet. Under these circumstances, Gyeonggi-do Province conducted research on the “Study on the Cultural Impact Assessment(CIA) in Gyeonggi-do” (Gyeonggi Research Institute) in 2016. Gyeonggi-do Assembly selected the introduction of cultural impact assessment as one of the core tasks of 2016. In 2017, the province is developing a model for its cultural impact assessment and in 2018 it will carry out a pilot project of cultural impact assessment in 2018. Last May, Gyeonggi-do and GyeongGi Cultural Foundation organized a forum inviting experts under the theme of the “Development of a Model for Gyeonggi-do’s Cultural Impact Assessment” (May 26, 2017). In parallel with the central government’s cultural impact assessment, Gyeonggi-do started discussing the “development of a model for Gyeonggi-do’s cultural impact assessment” with experts in order to carry out internal cultural impact assessment.

Cultural impact assessment enables a country or local government to guarantee each citizen’s autonomy, diversity and creativity of cultural expression and activities. Ultimately, this assessment system helps them realize cultural democracy in which citizens produce and enjoy culture actively. Such cultural democracy requires us to break away from our attitude of relying on the government or experts. Instead of the top-down method, in which all policies and plans are established and planned by the central government, we need the local or bottom-up method, in which policies and plans reflect different regions’ own characteristics. This means that Korea should consider to adopt the cultural decentralization policy through the analysis on that of France. Since the policies and plans of a country or local government are assessed on the basis of different regions, such assessment should be carried out not only by the central government but also by the local government ultimately. To do so, each local government needs to develop its own model of cultural impact assessment that reflects local characteristics. In this way, it can expect the true spread of cultural value in society.

The current assessment guidelines allow local governments to develop and apply their own assessment indicators and methods for internal assessment In other words, they don’t have to use the assessment report (checklist) provided by Korea Culture & Tourism Institute and they may use their own assessment methods and indicators to carry out assessment. Thus, a local government’s development of a cultural impact assessment model refers to development of assessment indicators and methods that would replace the checklist. After assessment, the local government must submit an assessment report to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. Such submission of a report requires further discussion on decentralization. Since cultural impact assessment fundamentally pursues cultural democracy, it is necessary to discuss the local government’s process of submitting the results of its assessment to the central government, which reviews them. In France, the central government transferred its budget and rights to local governments to implement the country’s cultural decentralization. Considering this, the Korean government also needs to transfer its budget and rights to local governments so that they can internally conduct cultural impact assessment, as the first step toward cultural democracy.

The current assessment guidelines require Gyeonggi-do to consider a few factors before developing its model for cultural impact assessment. First, the province needs to give necessary support in order to help the civil servants and residents of the province and its 31 cities and counties understand cultural impact assessment and to encourage them to discuss the purpose and effects of such assessment. To do so, Gyeonggi-do should plan and continue to regularly organize briefing and debate sessions and public hearing regarding cultural impact assessment for the civil servants and local residents.

Second, Gyeonggi-do also needs to run an expert forum for the development of a model for the province’s cultural impact assessment, thus making the discussion on the assessment public. The expert forum should continue to discuss the direction of the province’s cultural impact assessment, establishment of a pool of indicators, planning a relevant ordinance, assessment type, evaluators and assessment system.

Third, the province should train professional human resources specializing in cultural impact assessment that could work in 31 cities and counties. The province should also plan to help them carry out assessment, monitor assessment results and conduct joint research and projects through an interregional network in a sustainable manner.

Fourth, as a provincial government, Gyeonggi-do should plan to support and cooperate with 31 cities and counties in developing an assessment model, in addition to developing the province’s model. Considering the fact that cultural impact assessment must be conducted in a stable manner by cities and counties ultimately, Gyeonggi-do’s development of its cultural impact assessment model should be based on the models of the 31 cities and counties.

Lastly, Gyeonggi-do and the 31 cities and counties should cooperate to form a basis for making cultural impact assessment contribute to actually improving local residents’ quality of life. This is the most important part so forming a basis for implementation of cultural impact assessment must be done regardless of the content and form of the province’s cultural impact assessment model.

Gyeonggi-do’s development of cultural impact assessment model should go beyond designing simple policy assessment indicators and methods. Such a model should contribute to actively discussing and protecting local residents’ “cultural right,” which has been neglected so far, ultimately improving local residents’ quality of life. Therefore, Gyeonggi-do should not seek short-term results or effects but it should actively form a basis for implement of cultural impact assessment from a long-term perspective. That is because the “cultural right” of Gyeonggi-do’s residents and all Korean citizens cannot be improved by a short-term project.

While developing a model for its cultural impact assessment, Gyeonggi-do should make it clear that the province’s cultural policy direction is to realize cultural democracy. In this regard, the province needs its “declaration of local residents’ cultural right” in order to guarantee and protect their cultural right. This means that the province will gradually become a leader of the development of the 21st century by improving local residents’ happiness on the basis of not only economic growth but also improvement of their quality of life.

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