Impact of Regulations on Korean Broadcasting Market and Implications on the Future FTA

Abstract

Abstract

Impact of Regulations on Korean Broadcasting Market and Implication on the Future FTA: A Case Study on US, UK and Japan

Haley Cha International Cooperation Graduate School of International Studies Seoul National University

Korea broadcasting is now an emerging market, lucrative in global business. Korea is ranked world number three as the exporter of broadcasting contents after United States and United Kingdom, followed by Japan, based on year 2015 according to the study by Japanese Ministry. Far from the past where government had to implement various foreign quotas to protect the domestic business, now Korea has attained the sustainable status to act as an aggressive exporter in this field.

However, the vestige of past regulations to control influx of foreign capital still remains now. There are mainly two regulations being applied to foreign business entities. Ownership Cap for foreigner and Programming Quota for domestic content. Firstly, foreigners or any entities that widely defined as foreign cant own shares of broadcasting business property in excess of certain ratio from the total amount. This is to protect the domestic business from dominance of foreign capital. Secondly, from the total programming hours of domestic broadcasting system, certain ratio of programming hours must be allocated to the domestically-produced contents. This is also to protect the domestic market so that it achieve proper competitiveness before it is pushed out of the business. Korean government has made effort to gradually alleviate the regulation for recent 20 years. But there still lies the need to find out whether the current regulations are posed at appropriate level compared to the global standard.

Therefore this paper examines the regulations of three other countries which are United States, United Kingdom, and then Japan. Even though Korea has lifted many regulations so far, it is noticeable that neighboring countries has clearly lower guard to their domestic market. Also this paper concludes with implication for Korea regarding the future FTA.

Keywords: Broadcasting, Regulation, Ownership Cap of Foreigner, Programming Quota for Domestic Content, FTA Student ID: 2014-24212