Rethinking culture and development: the culture-led community development project in South Korea

Abstract

This study examines the use of culture in South Korean community development by analyzing four cases of 'Initiative for Creating Culture Communities in Everyday Life' (ICCE) and their development discourses. Effectively mobilized by the state during the period of industrialization and modernization that began in the 1960s, culture has been utilized for social development by the South Korean government since the 2000s. The complex relationship between development and culture in terms of economic and social approaches is reflected in the development discourses of ICCE projects. Indeed, as an alternative to previous economic approaches, these projects show that the government still strongly intervenes in social development through symbolic power. To examine this process, we administered a semi-structured questionnaire and held in-depth interviews with eight members of the government-led ICCE project, including its practitioners, artists, and residents. This study finds that despite its efforts to decrease direct intervention in the development of these societies, government power is strongly exercised in symbolic form through discursive practices. We thus suggest that to prevent a specific participant from unilaterally possessing symbolic power in the development process, the government should create an environment in which various agents can participate in the development discourse.