Culture Ministry: Budget Cut for Manhwa Video Promotion Agency Unrelated to 'Yoon Seok-yeol Car'

Local Governments and Cultural Sector Criticize as Retaliatory Measure
Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism: "Effectiveness Poor Compared to Budget Input"

The Korea Manhwa Contents Agency's budget for next year will be significantly cut. Some claim this is a retaliatory cut due to awarding the grand prize to the satirical cartoon "Yun Seok-yeol Train" in the student cartoon contest. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism denied this claim.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

According to the Korea Manhwa Contents Agency on the 20th, the agency's proposed government subsidy budget from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism for next year is about 6 billion KRW. This is a cut of approximately 5.6 billion KRW (48%) from this year's 11.64 billion KRW. On the surface, seven out of seventeen budget items were reduced, including projects such as the specialized education and training for manhwa industry personnel and the webtoon creation experience center.

Local governments and cultural circles point out that this is a retaliatory measure related to the "Yun Seok-yeol Train" controversy. "Yun Seok-yeol Train" is a work that won the grand prize in the cartoon category at the nationwide student cartoon contest held by the Korea Manhwa Contents Agency in July-August last year. The face of President Yun Seok-yeol is drawn on the front of a train. In the driver's cabin, a woman presumed to be First Lady Kim Geon-hee is waving her hand. Citizens inside the passenger cars, where men dressed as prosecutors holding knives are lined up, are shown fleeing with shocked expressions.

In response, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism expressed regret, stating, "A work that blatantly dealt with political themes was selected and exhibited in a nationwide student cartoon contest targeting middle and high school students. This is extremely contrary to the purpose of the event, which is to encourage students' desire to create cartoons." They pointed out, "Disqualifying factors such as political intent or defamation of others were missing from the contest guidelines and were not notified to the judges," and added, "There was also no in-depth review of whether the work was an unpublished original creation."

The Ministry maintains that its stance at the time and the budget cuts are unrelated. In a statement released that day, it said, "The budget cut projects were adjusted according to the government's budget formulation direction and evaluation results, and the support and scale of government subsidies for specific organizations can be adjusted annually according to policy directions."

According to the Ministry, projects such as the webtoon creation experience center, regional webtoon campus, and specialized training for manhwa industry personnel were evaluated as having poor effectiveness relative to budget input during the government budget review process. The manhwa publishing support, diversification of manhwa content support, and export work translation support projects had budget cuts due to cases of fraudulent claims. Overseas exhibition and exchange projects have been decided to be transferred to other institutions following last year's subsidy project extension evaluation results.

A Ministry official explained, "When cases of fraudulent claims are detected or subsidy project evaluation results lead to abolition or transfer, the same project method cannot be budgeted, so the subsidy project execution method was changed," and added, "Budget support for the manhwa and webtoon industry will be maintained through new projects such as specialized education for the webtoon industry workforce (2 billion KRW) and support for localization of manhwa and webtoon business (4 billion KRW)."