Progress without consensus: ‘instituting’ Arts Council in Korea

Abstract

Modelled on the British style of Arts Council, the Arts Council Korea (ARKO) was established in 2005 as an autonomous and consensus-based organisation. The creation of ARKO was expected to redefine the arts–state relationship in South Korea by developing arts subsidy operating at an arm’s length distance from the government. However, this has not happened because Korean arts policy is so deeply embedded in the country’s historical and political contexts that changes in its formal structure and organisation hardly guarantee the emergence of a new understanding and practice of state arts funding. Despite the rhetoric of the arm’s length principle, the government’s habitual control has persisted and even been reinforced. Meanwhile, the historically and politically rooted division within the arts sector has hindered the formation of sectoral consensus on the arts–state relationship and the ARKO’s operation, leaving the sector continuously dependent on a strong state.