Exhibitions over blockbusters: Korea’s changing cultural tastes

 
Koreans are skipping the movie theaters more often, opting instead to participate in “engaging” cultural and arts activities, according to recent government data.

The rate of direct attendance at cultural and arts events stood at 60.2 percent this year, down 2.8 percentage points from a year earlier, according to a survey released on Friday by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute. 
 
The survey distinguishes leisure activities based on the acts of “attendance” versus “engagement,” which can be defined by whether individuals involved consume or produce cultural experiences, respectively. In the case of art, for example, visiting exhibitions is categorized as “attendance” and curating exhibitions is “engagement.”
 
By category, movies recorded the highest attendance rate at 50.6 percent, followed by popular music and entertainment events at 15 percent, art exhibitions at 7.5 percent and musicals at 5.8 percent. While movies remained the most commonly attended category, their attendance rate fell by 6.4 percentage points from the previous year.  
 
In contrast, attendance at popular music and entertainment events rose by 0.4 percentage points, while art exhibitions increased by 2.1 percentage points.
 
The Culture Ministry said it plans to promote policies aimed at drawing audiences back to theaters, including expanding support for film production to increase the supply of high-quality movies and rolling out initiatives to revive movie attendance, which saw the steepest decline.
 
The average number of times people directly attended cultural and arts events fell to 2.4 percent, down 0.2 percent from a year earlier. Meanwhile, the rate of indirect consumption of cultural and arts events — through diversified media such as smart devices — rose by 0.4 percentage points to 72 percent.
 

Visitors view the ″Signs: Connecting Past and Future Opens in Seoul″ Jean-Michel Exhibition at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in Seoul. [JUN MIN-KYU]

Engagement in cultural and arts activities, such as presentations, exhibitions and creative work, stood at 5.8 percent this year, up 1.1 percentage points from last year. The share of respondents who reported having engaged in cultural and arts education also increased by 2.2 percentage points to 8.6 percent.
 
A separate survey on workers’ vacations found that the annual leave utilization rate last year reached 79.4 percent, the highest level since the survey began in 2018. Travel was the most common purpose for taking leave, cited by 35 percent of respondents, followed by rest at 28.6 percent and household chores at 16 percent. Average spending during vacations was estimated at 2.21 million won ($1,540).
 
As for conditions that enable smooth use of vacation time, a “workplace atmosphere that allows employees to freely take leave” was cited as the most important factor over the past five years. Workers’ perceptions of vacations ranked their positive impact on life highest with 76.1 points, followed by improved work concentration at 75.6 percent, enjoyment simply from resting at 75.1 percent and impact on productivity at 74.6 percent, suggesting that using vacation time contributes to both personal life satisfaction and job efficiency.
 
“The survey shows that Koreans’ cultural and leisure activities are increasingly shifting toward more self-directed forms,” said Lee Jung-woo, director general for arts and culture policy at the Culture Ministry.
 
Overall satisfaction with leisure life this year rose 2.4 percentage points from the previous year to 64 percent, the highest level since 2016. More than half of respondents, 56.6 percent, said they enjoy leisure activities alone.  
 
The share of leisure activities spent with family slipped slightly to 29.4 percent from 29.8 percent, while time spent with friends, including romantic partners, fell to 11.6 percent from 13.2 percent. The most common purpose of leisure activities was “personal enjoyment,” cited by 39.8 percent of respondents.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY HA NAM-HYUN [[email protected]]