K-Culture: A Global Phenomenon Still Expanding
 
K-Culture continues to expand across the globe. At〈Music Bank in Lisbon〉, held in Portugal, artists such as IVE, Taemin, and RIIZE performed before a crowd of 20,000.
 
It was not a one-time event but part of a broader system of performance production and fan-based engagement operating within the European market.

Meanwhile, the girl group LE SSERAFIM became the first K-pop girl group to perform on〈America’s Got Talent〉, presenting an English-language version of their hit song.
 
Their appearance on a major U.S. television network marked more than a milestone—it demonstrated that Korean popular culture is no longer an imported novelty but an active participant shaping the global media ecosystem.


 
K-POP Demon Hunters: A New Structure for the Korean Wave

Released on Netflix in 2025,〈K-POP Demon Hunters〉became a global sensation, symbolizing K-Culture’s evolution into a multi-layered cultural system that transcends genre boundaries.
 
Blending music, animation, gaming dynamics, and mythological storytelling, the film topped the North American box office its opening weekend and introduced a new ‘Streaming-Theater-Music’ integrated distribution model.

It was the first global case of integrating K-pop fandom culture, the visual language of animation, and the world-building of games into a unified IP system. K-Culture has thus evolved beyond the boundaries of a national brand—into a complex cultural network where narrative, image, sound, and digital infrastructure converge.
 
 

K-Culture’s Success Is Not Only About Creativity

International media and scholars view K-Culture’s rise as a structural achievement rather than a mere creative outburst.
 
France’s ‘Le Monde’ observed that “In just two generations, Korea has built global influence across music, film, fashion, and gastronomy—driven by government strategy, private capital, and export infrastructure.”
 
Analysts point to four interlocking forces behind its success: digital platforms, fan-driven ecosystems, cultural diplomacy, and concentrated private investment—all enabling creative autonomy within a systemic framework.
 
In other words, Korea’s global prominence is not simply a product of “passion,” but of systematic accumulation and institutional design.
 
 

The Current Landscape of Korean Contemporary Art

Despite economic slowdown, Korean contemporary art continues to draw international attention. Major museums, biennales, and global art fairs such as Frieze have increasingly featured Korean artists.

However, these achievements rest largely on individual effort and opportunity, not on an institutional foundation.
 
The art world remains bound by an outcome-oriented administrative framework. Success is still measured by quantifiable metrics—completed exhibitions, visitor counts, and international participation—while creative processes, research, and the value of failure receive little recognition.
 
What artists truly need is not just “results,” but time and space to build toward them.
 
 
 
Why Supporting Pure Art Matters

The longevity of culture depends on the strength of its pure artistic foundation. Popular culture thrives on the aesthetic depth and reflective imagination nurtured by the fine arts.
 
When that foundation is weak, culture becomes a fleeting trend; when it is strong, it renews itself across generations.

Fine art is not merely one artistic genre—it is a mirror of how a society thinks, imagines, and defines beauty.
 
Supporting the arts, therefore, is not a matter of administrative aid but of expanding a nation’s aesthetic intelligence and creative capacity. Cultural industries can only sustain themselves when they continuously generate new forms and languages—and those always originate from the experimentation and inquiry of pure art.
 
For today’s cultural achievements to evolve into tomorrow’s industries, Korea must strengthen the production base of foundational arts. Ultimately, the true measure of a nation’s cultural level lies in how freely and sustainably its artists can create.
 
A country with weak pure arts may consume culture—but it cannot create it.

The Structural Problems in Korea’s Art Policy

Yet current cultural policy gives insufficient attention to this foundation.
 
Fine art has been increasingly marginalized within industrial discourse, and most programs remain focused on end results—allocating funds to exhibitions, performances, and distribution stages rather than to research, studio environments, or long-term production.
 
Another serious issue is the lack of transparency in how grants and budgets are managed. Institutions such as the “Arts Council Korea” and the “Korea Arts Management Service (KAMS)” rarely disclose clear data on selection criteria, funding recipients, or the actual outcomes of their programs.

Without objective evaluation or accountability, public trust weakens and the gap between artists and administrators widens.
 
This structure falls far short of international standards. While leading cultural nations invest in transparent evaluation and long-term support to foster diversity and experimentation, Korea remains mired in short-term, opaque, results-based administration. 

As a result, the creative soil of fine art continues to erode—posing a fundamental threat to the sustainability of Korean culture itself.
 
This system does not nurture continuous creation; it instead treats completed works as consumable products,reinforcing the very commodification it claims to overcome. Such logic contradicts the government’s stated goal of building a “cultural ecosystem.” A true ecosystem is one of circulation and growth, not a collection of short-term outputs.
 
Particularly in the visual arts, support for studios, research, archives, and long-term projects remains minimal, leaving individual artists to struggle with unstable livelihoods and limited institutional backing.
 
Consequently, many young artists succeed abroad yet remain precarious at home—trapped between commercial dependency and systemic neglect. This is not merely an individual challenge but a structural failure of national cultural policy.
 
 

How Cultural Powerhouses Sustain Their Systems — Institutionalizing the Arts
 
Germany, France, and the United Kingdom have long recognized foundational artas a pillar of national competitiveness.
 
In Germany, the federal and state governments jointly support artist studios and “Kunsthalle institutions”, providing space and funding for experimental and long-term projects.
 
In France, the “Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP)” offers grants and production funding to artists, while public residencies in cities like Paris and Marseille treat artists not merely as producers but as researchers contributing to collective knowledge.
 
In the United Kingdom, “Arts Council England” prioritizes artistic value over predictable outcomes, funding projects even when results are uncertain—some operating on three-year or longer terms.
 
These nations view art not as an accessory to the economy, but as a means through which society imagines its future.

Structural Issues in Korea’s Fine Art Policy

Korea’s fine art policy remains bound to a performance-driven administrative model.
 
Government agencies allocate budgets based on measurable results—exhibitions completed, international showcases held—while the essential creative process of research, experimentation, and accumulation receives little institutional support.
 
Most funding programs lack global standards, clear objectives, or long-term vision. Budgets are typically short-term or one-off, making sustained artistic research nearly impossible.
 
Support for basic content production systems—studios, materials, research—is persistently neglected, trapping artists in a cycle of dependency on short-term outcomes and commercial returns.

Realistic Strategies for the Globalization of Korean Art

For Korean contemporary art to establish itself as a core site of global art production, a fully restructured infrastructure tailored to fine art is essential.

Artists must be granted the institutional time and flexibility to research and even fail.
 
A multi-year creation grant system—spanning three to five years—should redefine artistic work as a process of knowledge production, not merely a deliverable.
 
Equally urgent is the establishment of a national digital archive system that integrates records of artists, exhibitions, and critical writing, while making them accessible internationally. Such archives form the foundation of credibility and serve as a cultural legacy of the nation. Without this infrastructure, true global outreach will remain impossible—a reality still widely overlooked in Korea’s art ecosystem.
 
The Korean art world must now take inspiration from the success of K-Culture and pursue structural reform for sustainability.
 
This means dismantling outdated frameworks and building an infrastructure aligned with global standards.
 
Only through such transformation can the vibrant wave of K-Culture evolve into the era of K-Art. Then, and only then, will Korean art stand as both a producer and a birthplace of pure artistic creation on the world stage.