Government Requests Bold Investment from Cultural and Film Account Operators

Selected 13 Sites Last Month... Largest Ever Scale with 283.2 Billion KRW Raised
"Urgent Need for Liquidity Support through Policy Finance like the Mother Fund"

The government urged thirteen cultural and film sector investment management companies to actively participate and invest. This is to revitalize the content production market, which has been weakened due to the impact of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

On the 22nd at 2 p.m., the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism met with representatives of the cultural and film sector investment management companies at Korea Venture Investment to review the investment status. First Vice Minister Oh Young-woo said, “This is a critical time for liquidity support through policy finance such as the mother fund,” and requested, “Although the environment is difficult, please actively discover and invest in promising content companies and projects.” He also urged, “Please form the newly established venture investment funds early in the first half of this year and boldly invest in promising content.”

The content industry typically struggles with financing due to high risks and low collateral and creditworthiness caused by the small scale of companies. This year, difficulties have increased due to weakened investment sentiment following the COVID-19 impact. New investments in the cultural and film sector in the first quarter amounted to 41.9 billion KRW, a 19.4% decrease compared to the same period last year. Although sectors with smaller investment scales such as games, performances, and comics showed an upward trend, video content including films, broadcasting, and animation faced setbacks.

Last month on the 29th, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism selected thirteen cultural and film sector investment management companies and raised a record-high amount of 283.2 billion KRW. The largest portion of the fund, 81.5 billion KRW, is allocated to venture content (4 companies) that takes risks in early production stages. Fifth-generation convergence content (1 company) received 40 billion KRW, and overseas-linked content (2 companies) received 33.4 billion KRW. Following these are main film investment (1 company), games (1 company, over 30 billion KRW), animation and character content (2 companies, 25.9 billion KRW), content intellectual property (1 company, 26 billion KRW), and mid-to-low budget films (1 company, 16.4 billion KRW) in order of amount.

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