The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said Culture Minister Choi Hui-young appointed members of the 5th Regional Culture Cooperation Committee and held its first meeting on the 14th at the main conference room of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art's Seoul branch in Jongno-gu, Seoul. The committee is designed to serve as a key channel of communication between regional culture sites and the government.
The Regional Culture Cooperation Committee is a statutory committee based on the Regional Culture Promotion Act. It is responsible for deliberating on matters necessary for regional culture promotion, including the establishment, implementation, and evaluation of the basic plan for regional culture promotion, as well as balanced development of regional culture.
The ministry explained that to secure the expertise and diversity of the 5th committee, it received broad recommendations of candidates from other central government departments, local governments, and related public institutions, and selected the final 14 private-sector members after gathering opinions from regional culture sites from various angles. This committee includes a large number of experts from diverse fields, not only in culture and the arts but also in artificial intelligence (AI), tourism, traditional markets, law, and startups. The ministry judged that this could enhance the level of regional culture policy through a convergent perspective.
In particular, the participation of young members expanded significantly in the composition of the 5th committee (from 0% in the 4th committee to 21.4% in the 5th committee). This is the result of actively keeping pace with the policy stance that, in April, made it mandatory to raise the appointment ratio of young members from the previous 10% to more than 20% when composing government-affiliated committees.
"I hope the Regional Culture Cooperation Committee will play a key role in spreading the unique cultural assets found throughout regions as new cultural content, improving regional living conditions based on this, and furthermore achieving attractive regional growth led by culture," Minister Choi said.
