For someone who’s been here in Korea so long, Sperwer, you don’t know anything about how things work! This should read “Creating a system of regulation, especially if it involves imposing some level of illegality…” — because making things illegal creates opportunities to look the other way, for the right price.

Of course, I do know that, grasshopper. I phrased it the way I did to forestall comments from the pollyannas who comment here to the effect that making it illegal will solve (rather than compound) the problem.

. . . eliminating Korea’s brutal cabaret laws (which absolutely kill any underground music scene from developing)

I recall that in 1998, one such bad law was repealed that prohibited clubs from having live entertainment (almost no one followed that law). I do not think there are any other really onerous “cabaret” laws in place at this time.

Regarding your interest in city-level arts performance space and the management issues I had mentioned earlier, Korea has an on-going problem with local cities and their building-envy, which ends up costing the taxpayer in the long run.

What happens is city “Y” will hear of city “C” and their plans to build a new 1,400 seat theatre and they will think, “Oh my, we must have one of these as well since we are very modern as well.”, so they budget to build a concert facility or theatre with 1,400 seats BUT there are not enough ticket-buyers in the local population that would pay to see a decent concert or show, thus they can not put any shows in the performance space without losing money since any professional act and the city personnel that operate the space must be paid. Most local city personnel do not have the experience in operating such facilities for making a profit too.  All this means that our smaller, hypothetical city will lose money to put any show into their brand-new performance space because they can not sell enough tickets to cover the operational expenses, thus the facility becomes a local budget item and a burden. Now imagine that City “Y” built not just one theatre but they have FOUR or FIVE ; two 1,200 seat theaters, a 1,400 seater and even a nice, new 1,800 seat facility.  Next, consider that this scenario occurs *throughout* Korea, at any given time. Though the local city can always let the local adjumas put on charity shows and kid shows, these places will always lose money to operate, thus are a burden on the taxpayer and this collective burden could easily be in the trillions of won.

Though the local performance markets are slowly growing (people in smaller cities than Seoul do like entertainment), there is never any professional market research performed to determine what the local needs are for such performance space. Oddly enough, most local, professional promoters probably would have a fair idea if a certain geographic area could support the building of performance space but no one seems to ever ask if it is really needed or operationally feasible.  Obviously better planning and research is needed to help prevent such waste and maybe some programs could actually be created to help develop and the local entertainment markets and guide arts planning by local cities but just who would have national oversight or control over such? Maybe no one?

The missing consideration in your thoughts is *quality* IMHO and I can not easily think of quality when I am busy giving someone a facial with a shotgun in Marathon (though it makes me giggle a lot). Yes, you could talk of a “gaming culture” but that hardly describes the attributes of a culture of quality (Korean culture for example).

I guess it depends on the game you’re playing. Marathon, maybe not so much, but there’s a lot more to gamer culture than online deathmatches using FPS games. I was actually thinking more of virtual environments like World of Warcraft, Eve Online and other such MMORPGs - and for that matter, the story behind the HALO series of games is head and shoulders above most of the action flicks/shows coming out of Hollywood these days. Plus, they have interactivity working for them. So, yeah, maybe it’s not the National Opera or even the Boston Pops, but it’s middlebrow entertainment at the very least, several notches above sticking a needle in one’s arm.

Geez …if you get them into the tax system, then it’s much harder to skim illicit political funding from them. Creating a system of regulation, even if it involved imposing some level of illegality on them, is so much more conducive to extortion, bribery and the other forms of greasing the skids along which politics move in this country.

For someone who’s been here in Korea so long, Sperwer, you don’t know anything about how things work! This should read “Creating a system of regulation, especially if it involves imposing some level of illegality…” — because making things illegal creates opportunities to look the other way, for the right price.

Seriously, though, everyone in the world knows that increasing the power and penetration (ouch!) of the government into the lives and businesses of the citizenry increases the likelihood of corruption. Reduce government, reduce corruption. We saw a marked decrease in public corruption under Kim Dae Jung’s administration which deregulated many sectors, followed by flurries of re-regulation under the Uri fools, whose socialist/statist leanings make them unable to resist extending the fingers of government into everything. Will 1997-2003 be the “good old days of clean government?” ‘Cause it wasn’t all that great.

It’s protectionism disguised as morality

I don’t know how much “protectionism” it is or even morality. I’m not even saying I don’t understand why they did it or have a major problem with why.

If you have billions of dollars just flowing out of the economy, it is a no-brainer that the government is going to step in. Any government.

For example, is there any government in the world that does not check people coming into an airport from another country to see what value of goods and currency they are bringing with them and then tax that value if it exceeds a certain amount?

Governments are going to attempt to get their cut, and given the amount of social services we expect a government to provide to the masses, I can’t say I am fully unhappy about that. And if the nation is hemorrhaging too much money beyond its borders on something like online gambling, I don’t fault the government for trying to cut down the flow. It is definately seeking to protect its economy, but how much “protectionism” it is remains a question mark.

It just sucks for me, because I spend a good bit of time studying how to make money playing poker online. It was a great job while I was a graduate student. Now, it is gone.

Geez… why make these transactions illegal? Just tax them.

Geez …if you get them into the tax system, then it’s much harder to skim illicit political funding from them. Creating a system of regulation, even if it involved impsoing some level of illegality on them, is so much more conducive to extortion, bribery and the other forms of greasing the skids along which politics move in this country.

If anything, there has been little qualitative thought given to city-level arts management issues and local budgeting for such. There is a persistent problem regarding performance space that is built where there is no demand for such within the local communities, through out Korea and the great lack of thoughtful oversight in budgeting for these facilities and for their operation.

I, for one, would be greatly interested in this subject.

For the record, I think you are correct about the Ministry of Culture having skewed priorities. I just thought that the MCT getting involved in gaming was not a good example of that problem. Pushing for some serious IP enforcement and eliminating Korea’s brutal cabaret laws (which absolutely kill any underground music scene from developing) would be two more incredibly practical and helpful activities the MCT could do, imho.