KOCCA Provides Another Outlet for Korean Cultural Contents

As the largest and longest-running English K-Pop web portal, Soompi is proud to see real growth in the proliferation of Korean cultural contents all over the world. We’ve seen a number of English-based KPOP websites on come and go over the past decade, but none has been really impressive or thought of as providing much meaningful content, except for a handful few. However, one site that has truly caught our attention lately is the one by Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), a public organization that’s supported by the Korean government.

Established in 2009, KOCCA’s mission is to further increase awareness of South Korea’s cultural exports, including a wide range of content from K-Pop to TV dramas, video games, and much more. It publicizes itself as a public agency that “supports the creation and production of Korean content, including movies, games, animation, music, cartoons, characters, mobile, and TV.”  That perhaps explains why KOCCA is mainly comprised of five different entities: the Korean Broadcasting Institute, the Korea Culture and Content Agency, the Korea Game Development and Promotion Institute, the Culture & Contents Center and Digital Contents Business Group of the Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, as well as the Civil Rights Commission also support KOCCA. By incorporating the varying knowledge and expertise of each agency, KOCCA aims to effectively promote and develop the cultural industry of Korea.

In order to increase awareness and allow for easier access to its contents, KOCCA has started to put in more effort into its blog (http://korean-content.com), Twitter (www.twitter.com/koreancontent), and Facebook (www.facebook.com/koreancontent) pages. These pages serve as outlets to provide not only news updates, but also special features on the overall Korean cultural contents. For example, the “SpeaKorean” section on its Facebook page introduces popular Korean phrases from dramas and movies to help fans better understand the subtle meanings behind specific Korean words.

“As the Korean wave will not crest anytime soon, KOCCA hopes to be a valuable source of information and an active community for people of all backgrounds that are interested in diverse Korean contents,” KOCCA said.

KOCCA is still in its early development, but they understand the KPOP boom is also in its nascent stage with plenty of room to grow as they said, “KOCCA’s vision is to develop Korea as one of the world’s top five content leaders in the creative economy.”