Games led sharp growth in Korea's cultural exports in 2017

SEOUL, July 4 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's exports of cultural goods jumped about 47 percent year-on-year in 2017, led by games, K-pop and publishing, an official survey showed Thursday. The combined overseas sales in nine culture and entertainment sectors reached about US$8.81 billion, up 46.7 percent from the previous year, according to the annual content industry statistics published by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. The figure compares with the country's overall export growth that year of 15.8 percent. The industries surveyed were movies, broadcasting, publishing, music, games, cartoons, animation, advertising, characters, knowledge information and content solutions. Between 2013 and 2017, exports in the sectors increased at an annual rate of 15.7 percent to $4.92 billion in 2013, $5.27 billion in 2014, $5.66 billion in 2015 and $6.08 billion in 2016. Games posted the biggest year-on-year expansion with 80.7 percent in 2017, followed by publishing with 17.9 percent and music with 15.8 percent. Exports of broadcasting, advertising and movies decreased 11.9 percent, 15.1 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively. By volume, the gaming sector was the largest cultural exporter with $5.92 billion, followed by characters with $663.85 million, knowledge information with $616.06 million and music with $512.58 million. Imports of cultural goods were tallied at $1.2 billion, up 4.2 percent from the previous year. As a result, the trade balance in the sectors recorded a surplus of $7.61 billion. Domestic sales reached 113.22 trillion won ($96.93 billion), up 6.7 percent from the previous year. Games led the growth with 20.6 percent as all the sectors but publishing and animation expanded in sales. Publishing had the lion's share in domestic sales with 20.75 trillion won, followed by broadcasting with 18.43 trillion won, advertising with 16.41 trillion won, knowledge information with 15.41 trillion won and games with 13.14 trillion won. The number of workers in the cultural content industries stood at 644,847, a 2.1 percent increase from the previous year. The gaming industry saw its new jobs grow 10.7 percent, while those in the publishing and music sectors decreased. (END)