[Asia Exclusive] "I Take Responsibility"... One Phrase That Shattered the Withdrawn Organizational Culture

Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Park Yang-woo...

Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Park Yang-woo is being interviewed by Asia Economy at his office in Seogye-dong, Seoul. Photo by Kim Hyun-min kimhyun81@

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Dae-yeol] "The minister takes responsibility. Leave the difficult tasks to me."

Park Yang-woo, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said that when he took office in April last year, he focused on revitalizing the subdued organizational culture. He lamented that unlike in the past, due to the aftermath of the blacklist excluding cultural and artistic figures during the previous administration, the public service atmosphere had lost its initiative, with officials merely following directives from above rather than proactively working on their own.

After retiring from public service in 2008 as Vice Minister, Park returned to his 'home' after 11 years. He urged civil servants to take the lead in creating and implementing policies. While bearing the burden himself, he felt grateful to see junior officials gradually changing as they developed a sense of camaraderie with him as a senior public servant.

Approaching his first anniversary in office next month, Minister Park reflected, "I have been running non-stop." Right after his appointment, he rushed to Gangwon Province, which suffered from wildfires, to assess the local situation, and recently met with key religious leaders to seek cooperation in preventing damage from the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19).

The areas influenced by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism's policies are vast, including culture, arts, travel, tourism, and sports. If there was a need to visit the field regardless of day or night, weekends, or holidays, he went. After being nominated as a ministerial candidate, his family warned him, and he worried about how much busier his schedule would become compared to his lifestyle as a professor after leaving his previous public office.

Park, who became Vice Minister at the age of 47 in 2006, ended his public service career in 2008 and taught students at his alma mater for over ten years.

Park passed the civil service exam in 1979 during his third year of university. After joining the ministry and studying abroad in the UK, he co-authored "What is Arts Economy?" with senior and junior colleagues within the same ministry. Although the concept was already known overseas in the US and Europe, it was unfamiliar domestically, so they gathered and organized data and information from various countries.

At that time, culture and arts were treated as completely separate fields from management and economics in Korea. Now, after more than 20 years, it has become strange to view them separately.

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This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.