Kim Sae-won, president of the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute, speaks during an interview with The Korea Times in its newsroom in Seoul, last Thursday. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

President of Korea Culture and Tourism Institute speaks about her role to change the institute

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Kim Sae-won took the helm at the state-run Korea Culture and Tourism Institute (KCTI) in late October, around the time when the nation went into shock following the tragic crowd crush that killed 158 people who gathered in Itaewon to celebrate Halloween.

As the newly appointed head of a research institute responsible for producing commissioned research papers on culture and tourism, she came to think about how the deadly incident would impact the nation's tourism industry.

"It's natural that people would not want to travel in a country that is not safe," she said during an interview at The Korea Times newsroom in Seoul on Thursday. "The crowd crush is a tragedy, as we lost many lives and many others were injured. It is also bad news for those who are involved in the tourism industry because foreign travelers who were inspired to explore Korea because of K-pop or Korean dramas may want to rethink or scrap their travel plans."

Before taking the helm at the KCTI, Kim had worked as a journalist for two decades, which was followed by her career transition as a university professor. While working with the Korean daily, Dong-A Ilbo, she served as the newspaper's correspondent in Europe from 1998 to 2001. She covered extensively issues related to culture and politics.

After leaving Dong-A Ilbo, she pursued faculty career starting in 2006 at Konkuk University in Seoul as a lecturer and adjunct professor. There, she taught comparative cultural studies, cross-cultural management and culinary culture, among others. She also taught students at Catholic University of Korea and Korea University Graduate School of International Studies.


While teaching students, she had published five books, including, "A Glimpse of Globe Through Culture Code."

Kim's extensive experiences as a journalist, professor and author make her a unique figure in the KCTI's leadership. The vast majority of her predecessors were academics when they were called upon to serve in the state institute.

"The way the KCTI leadership was filled reflects how tourism has adapted to the changing environment," she said. "In the early years, most of the KCTI's presidents were academics whose expertise was in culture or cultural studies. Then, there were people who studied tourism or the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) sector as their areas of specialization before they took the helm at the institute. The changing expertise of the KCTI's leaders shows the shifting focus of tourism."

The KCTI will celebrate the 20th anniversary of its establishment on December 4th. The state-run institute was launched in 2002 following the merger of a cultural institute under Arts Council Korea and a tourism institute affiliated with the Korea Transport Institute.

Kim revealed her excitement and ambition about her leadership role at the institute. Overseeing an institution with a staff of 190 affiliated with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the KCTI president said she would like to make the institute a fun place to work.

"When I first met senior officials of the institute on my first day as KCTI president, I asked them to introduce themselves in a more creative way, rather than simply saying their names and positions. I told them that using their personality assessment test results based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or the Zodiac could be interesting," she said, adding that the people there seemed to be a little bit embarrassed as they were not familiar with such methods.

Kim said she would like to transform the KCTI into a world-class platform that can "excite, thrill and resonate with" people outside of Korea about the country's culture and tourism.

She said she'd like to make the institution global, noting that diversity and representation are two other focuses she would like to introduce at the state-run institute during her tenure.

"In Korea, we have many naturalized Koreans and I would like to invite some of them as goodwill ambassadors of the KCTI," she said.

Kim will stay in the leadership post for three years.