Games Entering the Cultural and Artistic Sphere... 'Game = Disease' Loses Its Power

A teenager receiving game tutoring at a PC bang. Photo by Asia Economy DB

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] A bill to include games within the scope of culture and arts has passed the National Assembly's standing committee. As a result, the movement to introduce the gaming disorder disease code designated by the World Health Organization (WHO) into Korea is expected to lose momentum.

According to the National Assembly on the 27th, the Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee approved nine legislative amendments, including the amendment to the Culture and Arts Promotion Act that expands the scope of culture and arts to include games, at its plenary session on the 25th.

The amendment to the Culture and Arts Promotion Act adds games, animation, and musicals to the definition of culture and arts. Currently, literature, fine arts, music, dance, theater, film, entertainment, gugak (traditional Korean music), photography, architecture, language and literature, publishing, and culture are included. Recognition as culture and arts will provide grounds for receiving various national supports such as culture and arts funds.

Attempts to include games as culture and arts were also made during the 20th National Assembly, but discussions stopped at the Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee's bill subcommittee stage at that time.

Rep. Seungrae Cho of the Democratic Party, who proposed the amendment, said, “Games are one of the very important fields in the development of the content industry, and although they are a comprehensive art form combining various artistic genres, they have not been included in the legal definition of culture and arts, thus not receiving equal treatment with other cultural and artistic genres. I expect that the passage of this amendment will serve as an opportunity to improve the negative perception of games and expand support for the game industry.”

In response to the National Assembly's move, the Korea Game Industry Association expressed a welcoming stance. The association emphasized, "The amendment contains provisions to expand the definition of culture and arts, and accordingly, games have been newly added to the scope of culture and arts. In the current era, games have established themselves as a comprehensive art form that fuses various genres such as video, fine arts, music, and narrative, and have long been recognized overseas as a new genre leading the cultural and artistic paradigm of the 21st century."

They added, "Advanced gaming countries such as the United States, Japan, and France have already recognized or officially declared games as art, showing swift progress. The association and its members actively support and welcome the inclusion of games in Korean culture and arts, and will continue to strive for the proper spread of game culture and improvement of public perception."

This amendment is also expected to weaken the movement to assign a disease code to games. In 2019, the WHO unanimously approved the inclusion of ‘gaming disorder’ as a disease code in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). Gaming disorder was assigned the code ‘6C51’.

ICD-11 has been applied to 194 WHO member countries since this year, but its introduction in Korea is expected to be reflected in 2025 when the Korean Standard Classification of Diseases (KCD) is revised every five years according to the Statistics Act. However, since the WHO’s disease criteria are recommendations, the post-processing of this amendment depends on the will of each country's health authorities.

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