[Editorial] Expansion of “Culture Day”... Concerns Over Making Subsidies for Certain Industries Such as Film Permanent

The scope of cultural policy should encompass a wide range of areas, including online and offline content... It must not be limited to films and performances

Price intervention and preferential subsidies for specific industries such as film will distort market signals and increase fiscal burdens

On January 16, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism issued advance notice of a proposed amendment to the Enforcement Decree of the Framework Act on Culture, expanding “Culture Day” to every Wednesday.

As a result, the 7,000 won discount on 2D films at major movie theaters will, in effect, become permanent. While the intent of broadening opportunities to enjoy culture is understandable in itself, this expansion is concerning because it is highly likely to function as an indirect subsidy for the film industry rather than as cultural policy.

The scope of cultural policy spans a wide range of areas, including tourism, cultural heritage, sports, literature, fine arts, music, dance, theater and film, photography, architecture, cartoons, games, animation, and online content. However, it is unreasonable that the main benefit categories under “Culture Day,” apart from national and public cultural facilities, are limited to movie theaters, performances, and exhibitions.

Cultural policy can play a role in improving public access. However, when the government repeatedly lowers the prices of ordinary consumer goods traded in the private market, the policy can devolve into one that props up demand in specific sectors with taxpayer money. The moment “culture” becomes a pretext for industrial promotion, the legitimacy and efficiency of the policy must be subjected to even stricter scrutiny.

Above all, the approach of reducing the crisis in the film industry to a matter of ticket prices has clear limitations. Audiences do not watch films simply because they are cheap. They open their wallets only when there is something worth watching. Support measures that lower prices may create a temporary draw for audiences, but they are unlikely to resolve the structural problems facing the industry, such as changes in consumption patterns due to the spread of OTT platforms, intensified content competition, and tightening conditions in the investment and production markets.

Permanent discounts may instead risk distorting the market. Rather than increasing viewing demand, they are more likely merely to shift demand to a specific day of the week, while only reinforcing the tendency for audiences to concentrate even more heavily on a few commercially promising works.

In this process, pressure on movie theaters and the production and distribution markets to innovate may weaken, while dependence on government policy grows stronger, raising the risk that the “trap of support” will be repeated.

Universal discount benefits are also difficult to reconcile with the policy goal of narrowing cultural gaps. The benefits are likely to be concentrated on existing cultural consumers who already have the time and mobility to take advantage of them, ultimately creating a regressive structure in which tax money is returned in the form of coupons to specific consumer groups. Rather than pushing for permanent implementation simply because it is a popular policy, a sober assessment of cost-effectiveness and equity should come first.

What the government should do is not regularly cut movie ticket prices, but remove institutional obstacles and restore market functions so that the industry can recover its competitiveness on its own in a changed environment.

Cultural policy should not operate by replacing the market, but by enabling the market to function. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism should reconsider this expansion to ensure that it does not become a permanent subsidy for a declining specific industry.

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Original title: [논평] ‘문화가있는날’확대...영화 등 특정산업 보조금 상시화 우려

Author: Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

Date: 2026-01-23

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=comment&pn=1&idx=28537