‘Now it's indie’: The creative turn of the cultural policy in the Korean indie music scene

As creative industry policy discourse has travelled quickly across the South Korean cultural industry, including the Korean Wave and beyond, the indie music artists in South Korea have found opportunities to perform and promote their music overseas. The recent cultural policy along with the direct support programs are unexpected, because of the conservative nature of the government and the nature of the South Korean indie music as independent from political and economic powers. With the example of the overseas advance of South Korean indie artists, with government support, this article presents an examination of the complex relationship between the government's creative cultural policy and the resulting effects of the policies on the South Korean indie music scene. It is argued that it is yet to be determined whether the cultural policy is having a negative or positive effect on the cultural industry. This article suggests that the cultural policy, whatever the goals of the policy-makers, is interacting with other elements—such as the political economy of the technologies of distribution and consumption, subculture, and the methods through which the cultural policy discourse is articulated among the policy community—beyond the objectives of the policy itself.