Abstract
Digital Media City (DMC) is an ambitious urban development project on a previous waste disposal site of Seoul. While it had been promoted as the world’s first high-tech complex in the early 2000s, it has now developed into the hub of the Korean Wave, concentrating South Korea’s key media and entertainment industries. This chapter explains how the rise of the Korean Wave and the government’s political and economic aspirations shaped the development of DMC. In particular, we focus on how the Korean Wave, which began as an intangible cultural product, has been translated into tangible urban formation of a planned creative cluster. Although DMC managed to cluster cultural-creative industries, we highlight that intrinsic values of culture are important to further support its creative urban environment.
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Notes
- 1.
Kim Do-nyun is one of the principal designers of the DMC (notably, the designer of the now famous Digital Media Street) and a Professor at Sung Kyun Kwan University in Seoul.
- 2.
Instead of ‘creative class’, this chapter prefers to use the term ‘creative worker’ to refer to all those who work in the CCIs.
- 3.
Revenue came not only from the products, but also from related commodities such as fashion, food, cosmetics, cosmetic surgery and cultural tourism.
- 4.
- 5.
The construction of DMC began in November 2006.
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Interviews
Ahn, J. “DMC as a Creative Milieu”. Interview by Junmin Song. In person. Nonhyun-dong, Seoul, 05, 2014.
Byeon, C. “What is the Creative City.” Interview by Junmin Song. In person. Neungdong-ro, Seoul, 04, 2014.
Kim, D. “How to Plan DMC.” Interview by Junmin Song. In person. Suwon, Gyungi-do, 04, 2014.
Lee, D. “Informal Interview during the Field Work Period.” Interview by Junmin Song. DMC, Seoul, 09, 2011.
Park, S. “Management of DMC.” Interview by Junmin Song. In person. DMC, Seoul. 04, 2014.
Song, J. “Creative Class in DMC.” Interview by Junmin Song. In person. Sungsu-dong, Seoul, 04, 2014.
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Song, JM., Joo, YM. (2020). From Rubble to the Korean Wave Hub: The Making of the New Digital Media City in Seoul. In: Gu, X., Lim, M.K., O’Connor, J. (eds) Re-Imagining Creative Cities in Twenty-First Century Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46291-8_10
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