Cultural Empire
Seo Jung, chief executive officer of South Korea's largest multiplex cinema chain CJ CGV, said Korean movies should set up a new agenda to push into global markets.
He stressed the importance of its globalization during the Movie Industry Media Forum at the CGV Yeouido theater in Seoul on June 22, saying, “As the Korean economy's traditional growth engine, manufacturing, is declining, the cultural industry should be the next growth engine.” In fact, CJ CGV, which actively seeks to go global, sealed a deal to acquire Mars Entertainment Group, the largest movie chain in Turkey, on the 3rd. The acquisition pushed the company to fifth among global multi-screen theater chains when ranked by the number of screens owned.
Nevertheless, Seo said CJ CGV still has a long way to go compared with global leaders in the cultural industry on the grounds that China’s largest entertainment group Wanda took over AMC Entertainment Holdings, the second-largest movie theater chain in the U.S., and Carmike, its fourth largest, becoming the world's largest cinema operator with 9,500 screens. He also added that the combined sales of the group’s cultural industry unit stand at only a small percent of that of global leading companies.
Seo commented that it is a shame that domestic firms are still clinging to the agendas of the past, such as screen monopoly and vertical integration, though it is getting competitive to capture global markets. At the time when global competition is getting fierce, businesses should not stick to such small agendas but turn their eyes to bigger ones, like the settlement of content polarization and globalization of the Korean film industry, according to him.