The UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity: solution to culture and trade tension? The case of Korean Film Industry

Cultural industries have become increasingly important in today’s global economy. But, as they become more significant, the tension that always lies underneath between culture and trade has grown stronger. The tension between culture and trade is grounded on the dual-value nature of cultural products, i.e. commercial value and cultural value. The tension will rise when there is imbalance recognition of both values, which can happened in various forms depending on the relationship between culture and trade. At the level of international trade, the tension is resulting from the neglect of cultural value in an international trade governance regime of WTO, which is the most important international trade rules reference. This tension leads to the demand for the new global governance regime that including cultural value in international trade sphere. As the result, the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Diversity of Cultural Expressions was established in 2005. The Convention holds “cultural diversity” of cultural expression norm and legitimizes government interventions for protecting this norm. This Convention has become a hope of many countries that want to protect their cultural industries from liberalization agenda of WTO and other trade agreements that construct in the same norm as WTO. This paper is questioning thepotential and ability of the UNESCO Convention as the global governance that can solve the tension between culture and trade. It argues that as long as there is no cooperation between culture governance regime and trade governance regime, or if the enforcement powers of the two separated regimes are not equal,the tension cannot be solved. The paper uses the case of Korean film industry to illustrate the existing tension between culture and trade, and the argument.