Comparative study of Korean cultural city policies: Focusing on cultural democracy perspectives

With the advent of deindustrialization around the world, cities around the world are using cultural city strategies as a strategy to solve urban problems and achieve sustainable development through culture. Korea introduced the regionalbased cultural city policy in the early 2000s for the purpose of balanced regional development, followed by the cultural specialty district project in the 2010s, and since 2019, the statutory cultural city policy based on the Regional Culture Promotion Act has been implemented. A total of 24 cities have been designated as statutory cultural cities from the first to the fourth level, and cities designated as cultural cities are given a budget of up to 20 billion won for five years. Statutory cultural cities are policies to achieve cultural and social goals through cultural democracy and cultural and economic goals of regional revitalization through cultural urban regeneration. Cultural democracy here refers to the principles of participation, cultural autonomy, sharing, and cultural diversity. A cultural city aims to organize the city’s culture through the four principles of cultural democracy. The Yoon Seok-yul government, which came to power in 2022, changed the name of the cultural city to Korea Culture City and heralded a change in the cultural city policy. This study aims to examine how cultural city policies designed on the basis of cultural democracy have changed in the context of these political changes and the implications for the daily lives of the majority of citizens living in local cities.