The Triangle of Games, Content, and Policy

Interview with Dr. Kim Dong-hyeon, Part 2 -- how a technology researcher became a policy architect of Korea cultural industry. In the early 1990s, games were classified as entertainment businesses subject to regulation; film VFX was considered Hollywood exclusive. But after achieving results in technology experiments, Kim moved to the forefront of policy and institutional design. Q: You recommended game industry promotion to the government in 1992. Kim: "I proposed to a MOST official that the government should nurture games and film. The reaction was cold -- games were classified under Entertainment Business Regulation Law, the same category as prostitution. So instead of persuading directly, I decided to first create visible results. That was the Gumiho film VFX project. Once successful cases accumulated, the government attitude changed." Q: On the budget expansion and regulatory coordination. Kim: "When the Ministry of Posts became the Ministry of Information and Communication in late 1994, the budget scale expanded 10x. The then-director asked me: Can you use budget for games? I said of course. First move was capital circulation -- Information Promotion Fund. We lent to one company, they succeeded, repaid with interest, lent to another company." Q: On the 8-ministry regulatory coordination body. Kim: "The regulatory barriers were distributed across 8 ministries -- Culture (performance regulation), Public Safety (game room), Communications (equipment), Health (addiction), Education (content), Finance (taxation), Commerce (export), Defense (military use). We created a cross-ministry coordination mechanism that could make unified regulatory decisions. This became the institutional foundation that later enabled the Korean Wave policy infrastructure." The legacy: Kims policy work in the 1990s-2000s created the regulatory and investment framework within which today 300 trillion won K-culture discourse operates.