Seoul wants broadcasting, streaming and creator media to become a 30-trillion-won industry by 2030. The revealing part is not the headline target, but who is supposed to own the work.
South Korea has set a new scale target for the screen industries. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s seventh medium-term broadcasting plan aims to lift combined broadcasting, online-video and creator-media revenue to 30 trillion won by 2030, raise exports to $3.06 billion and double the share of production companies with annual revenue above 10 billion won.
The plan arrives two years before the previous 2023–2027 strategy was due to end. That early reset is itself a diagnosis. The state no longer sees television production, domestic streaming platforms and online creators as separate policy lanes. It is trying to build one system around intellectual property, global distribution, new formats and fairer contracts.
The most consequential promise is support for producers to retain intellectual-property rights. Korea does not lack successful programs. It lacks consistent mechanisms that allow the companies and creators behind those programs to keep participating in the value created after a series is delivered, adapted, licensed or exported.
A larger definition of the screen industry
The plan brings creator video, short-form production, artificial-intelligence-assisted video and virtual performers into a framework previously centered on broadcasting and streaming. The government also plans an integrated legal basis covering broadcasting, OTT, film, animation and newer video forms.
That expanded definition reflects the market viewers already inhabit. A production company may develop a television drama, sell it through a platform, circulate clips through social video, license characters and build follow-up formats around the same property. Regulation and support programs designed around a single delivery channel miss that chain.
The broader frame also allows creator media to be treated as an industry rather than a promotional appendage. Standard contracts for creators, training pathways and rights protection are now part of the same conversation as production finance and export policy.
The 30-trillion-won number needs context
The ministry says the domestic broadcasting-video sector recorded 24.9944 trillion won in revenue in 2024, the largest revenue total among Korean content sectors. Exports reached $1.25718 billion, up 20 percent from the previous year, with average annual growth of 16 percent over five years.
Against that base, a 30-trillion-won revenue target is ambitious but not a promise of a new industry appearing from nothing. It implies roughly 20 percent nominal growth over six years. The export goal is much steeper: reaching $3.06 billion would require well over doubling the 2024 figure.
That gap explains the plan’s emphasis on global circulation. Domestic revenue alone cannot carry the export target. Korean producers need repeatable routes into foreign platforms and markets, and they need contract structures that preserve enough ownership to benefit when a title travels.
IP ownership is the real test
Production support can increase the number and scale of programs without changing who captures the long-term value. If a producer finances a series but transfers most rights to a commissioning platform, a global hit may improve the platform’s library more than the producer’s balance sheet.
The new plan proposes stronger production support tied to IP ownership, overseas expansion for domestic OTT services and financing that can help companies develop and distribute projects. It also sets a goal of doubling the share of production companies with more than 10 billion won in annual revenue.
Those pieces belong together. A larger middle tier of producers will not emerge from one-off production fees alone. Companies need properties they can license, extend and use as collateral for future work. The difference between a supplier and a studio is often the rights it keeps.
The policy challenge is implementation. Public support can encourage rights retention, but global platforms negotiate from scale. Smaller producers may still trade ownership for certainty. To change that bargain, state finance has to arrive early enough, remain predictable and reduce the cost of saying no to an unfavorable contract.
Domestic platforms remain part of the strategy
The plan also supports overseas expansion by Korean OTT services. That goal has appeared in earlier policy packages, but the competitive environment keeps getting harder. International platforms spread technology and content costs across many markets; domestic services operate with smaller subscriber bases and a far narrower capacity to absorb expensive failures.
Export support can help with localization, partnerships and market entry. It cannot by itself resolve fragmentation at home. Korean platforms still have to answer what distinctive catalog, product or regional strategy they can offer that global competitors do not.
The state’s decision to fold creator media into the same plan may open a more practical route. Short-form video, creator-led formats and hybrid distribution can travel with lower production costs than premium drama. They also create different relationships with audiences, advertisers and commerce. A national streaming strategy built only around prestige series would miss that flexibility.
Fair work is infrastructure
The ministry says it will revise standard broadcasting contracts to reflect the changed production structure and create a standard contract for content creators. It also plans staged talent development, from new entrants to existing professionals and OTT industry leaders.
These measures are not side issues. Export growth depends on a labor system that can repeatedly produce work without treating exhaustion, opaque rights transfers or unpaid development as hidden subsidies. Standard contracts matter only when commissioners use them and creators can enforce them, but they establish a public benchmark for what fair dealing should look like.
The plan also includes accessibility support, including audio description and conversion of subtitles to speech, as well as use of the Culture Nuri Card to support OTT access for people with lower incomes. That places audience access inside industrial policy rather than outside it. A media sector is not healthy only because it exports; it also has to serve viewers at home.
From hit-making to company-building
Korea’s screen industries have spent the streaming era proving that individual programs can travel. The new plan is trying to move the policy focus from hits to durable companies.
That shift is visible in the targets: not just more revenue and exports, but more producers above a meaningful scale; not just funded programs, but retained IP; not just television and OTT, but creator-led and new-media forms; not just production, but contracts, training and accessibility.
The 30-trillion-won headline will be easy to repeat and difficult to interpret. The better measure will be structural. By 2030, do more Korean producers own the stories they developed? Can domestic platforms build viable foreign lanes? Do creators work under clearer contracts? If those answers improve, the plan will have built capacity rather than merely counted output.
