[Ecommerce] Story on Screen quota and UNESCO CCD

[Manon Ress]

Screen quota defenders rally for Unesco draft
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/
200510/19/200510192256020439900091009101.html

October 20, 2005 =E3=85=A1 The long-running dispute over Korea's screen
quota system is moving onto new ground: the quota's supporters are
rallying around the final draft of a Unesco convention that would
exclude the cultural industries in all of the organization's member
states from free trade agreements or World Trade Organization bylaws.
Advocates of the quota, which forces theaters to show a certain
number of Korean films, have touted the system's protection of
"cultural diversity" since protectionism became harder to defend
internationally.
The Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of
Cultural Expressions is to be voted on tomorrow at the 33rd general
assembly of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization.
Advocates of the quota are understandably nervous about its future.
The Korean government is eager to sign a bilateral investment treaty
or free trade agreement with the United States, and the screen quota
system is perhaps the biggest stumbling block.
If the draft is adopted, it could be used to justify the quota even
if an FTA were signed with the United States. The screen quota is so
named because it requires theaters to screen Korean films 146 days a
year and protects the domestic film industry from its arch-nemesis:
Hollywood.
According to Unesco's 2000 world report on culture, the eight leading
Hollywood studios share 85 percent of the world market, and the three
biggest audiovisual media firms =E2=80=95 Time Warner, Viacom, and Walt
Disney =E2=80=95 are located in the United States.
The size of the American industry is the crux of the problem. It
gives opponents reason to fear Hollywood and Washington a reason to
back it up.
And back it Washington has. In a letter to foreign affairs ministers
of Unesco member states earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleeza Rice urged Unesco to delay adopting the draft convention,
citing the draft's "ambiguous language" that could be interpreted in
a way that would undermine existing trade agreements and derail
progress toward a global trade opening under the WTO.
"I urge you to work with us to postpone action on this convention
until we have had more time to address its serious flaws," the letter
read.
In Unesco's June negotiation, 127 of the organization's 135 countries
approved the draft, including France, Canada and Spain. And at the
Pusan International Film Festival, both Korean film industry
representatives and foreign guests argued in favor of the convention,
pointing out that the United States was the only country to speak
openly against it.
Ahn Sung-ki, a famous actor and the head of the Coalition for
Cultural Diversity in Moving Images, said the reduction of the quota
system could bring risks in uniformity of art and cultural visions
given the current distribution networks in Korea.
In 2002, China adopted a similar quota system, regulating Chinese
theaters to show 66 percent of domestic films.
"The Korean movie industry suffers from the lack of distribution
channels to show diverse films," says Ahn Jeong-suk, chief of the
Korean Film Council.
Some say the quota should be changed. Ven Bures, a Dutch film critic,
said the quota system should be based on a consensus to protect the
diversity of Korean films in the market including independent films
that have a harder time being screened in theaters.


by Park Soo-mee <myfeast@joongnag.co.kr>

Additional reporting by Kong Jun-wan

************************************************
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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