'Korean Wave' proves worthy to be rated as one of the economy's growth engines As culture content rises as one of Korea's growth engine industries in the shape of Hallyu (Korean Wave), the possibilities for Korea's culture content breaking into global markets are appearing to be very high. Hallyu epitomizes the export potential of Korea's culture content very well, president & CEO Suh Byung-Moon, of the Korea Culture & Content Agency (KOCCA) states his views with confidence in a special interview with the Korea IT Times, explaining that it proves that Korea's culture content can be highly competitive in the global market. First of all, Mr. Suh points out that it is perfectly natural that Korea's culture content is making inroads into international markets in this manner: "The global economy is changing with service business-oriented and likewise Korean economy also is going toward service-centered." As of 2003, the relative importance of the service industry as a portion of GDP was actually 78.8% in the United States, 73.2% in Britain, and 69.6% in Japan respectively. In the case of Korea too, it has increased from 49.5% in 1990 to 57.2% in 2003. However, there are no special service business items for Korea, which can make inroads into world markets among service businesses, Suh noted. In reality, Korea's culture content industry lags behind Japan's, the CEO elaborated, "Japan captures 62% of the world cartoon market share, whereas Korea is no more than just 1%. Moreover in 2002, the Unites States exported $1.1 billion worth of steel, but Japan exported almost four times that amount in the field of animation, with exports of $4.35 billion." He added that Korea also could enlarge market share any amount if we supplement creativity and overseas marketing alone in comparison with Japan. In that regard, he emphasized above all the importance of creativity for nurturing culture contents plus technology development, manpower nurturing and marketing for overseas inroads so that Korea can consolidate firmly its phase of culture content in global markets. President Suh who stressed that Korea's culture content industry qualifies as one of the growth engine industries for Korea, explained that it can produce high valueadded with the culture content industry itself and it is possible to diversify profit through one-source multi-use. Moreover, the culture content industry elevates the national brand and its ripple effect to enhance manufacturing's valueadded is also significant, promoting increased interest in Korean culture, sales increase of Korean products, and Korea tourism inducement. In this context, Suh underlines that it is a priority task for Korea also to expand Hallyu's genre and inroad regions in coming months as well as years. Concerning overseas market inroad support strategy by culture content detail contents, Suh explained that it is necessary to make inroads into Asia markets preferentially in the case of music, drama and movies on the basis of cultural sympathy. But in the event of cartoons, characters, animation and game etc., he expressed the opinion that it is necessary to capture world markets from the beginning since target market can differ according to culture content genres In particular, he proposed that it is necessary to diversify from hitherto music, drama, movie-centered Hallyu to game, character and animation and to pioneer new markets from Asia-centered to the United States and Europe markets and further toward South America and Russia etc. In regard to signs of anti-Hallyu sentiment in China and Japan, he emphasized that Korea needs to induce bi-directional culture exchange, adding that anti- Hallyu sentiment is not the least due to a one-sided inroad of Hallyu from Korea's side. On one hand, KOCCA is becoming the object of interest from the global culture content business circles by establishing a "Global Mobile Contents Award', with an eye on the fact that Korea is the largest power in mobile, with the support of MCT (the Ministry of Culture & Tourism) in this year's Seoul Digital Forum which will be held on May 24~26, 2006 at Sheraton Walkerhill, Seoul, Korea.