Grandiose, splendid, magnificent, and colorful are words which are regularly used to describe the ways modern mass culture is evolving, and accelerating at a speed and on a scale previously unknown to the human race. It is changing our tastes, preferences, and aesthetics while absorbing traditional cultures of a non-flamboyant style. Movies sell a million tickets easily, ten million sometimes. Books on the other hand barely sell more than a thousand copies. It seems the higher the quality the lower the chance that the book will be read.
    What is lost with the flood of flourishing modern mass culture is traditional culture as handed down from generation to generation. Individuals, households, even local communities are no longer the producers of culture. They are becoming the passive consumers of it instead. This trend is further exacerbated with globalization, a unifying force of markets, consumption, cultures, and even human desires. It seems that the world is heading toward a single global market, and one global secular culture with the same individualistic desires.
     Recently in Germany, however, dialects have started to be taught once again in school, and broadcast in the local provinces. The Germans are aware of the cultural values of dialect. Unique intonations, sounds, ways of thinking, and humor embedded in the dialects are comfortable to locals, while surprising and enticing to outsiders.
    The same is true of local cultures. Unlike mass-produced culture, local cultures involve individual participation and creativity, and contribute to diversifying the culture. For this reason, globalization needs localization and vice versa. Globalization can enrich itself with prospering localizations, while localization can reach wider audiences in an effort to be global. Globalization enriches Korean culture, and the Korean wave enriches global culture.
    This is the reason why society supports students’ voluntary cultural activities. From the Greek etymology, ‘culture’ is a derivation of ‘cultivation’ i.e., to grow or to rise. A Society as well as individuals needs cultivate itself. Numerous examples show in history that many new cultural movements started from within universities. New trends of music, painting, movies, literature, or philosophy emanated from university students. Many other social changes also started or have their roots in the university. Anti-authoritarian social movements, for example, started in many universities in the 60’s. Throughout history, universities have always been the bed-rock for experiment and innovation. However, these were only made possible through voluntary participation by students.
    Whatever their objectives, voluntary groups and student participation are invaluable to the future of our society. They sow the seeds for a better world. It is of no use to criticize or deplore the encroaching effect of globalization. It is a pity that many people easily fall prey to this persecutory delusion. Globalization provides new opportunity to expand the audience of Korean culture beyond Korea to the world as has recently been shown by the Korean Wave. We need to take active, not passive, initiative to create indigenous culture, while at the same time, striving to be global. Only those cultures, local and global simultaneously, will survive in the coming ages.
Final word! So much begins at the university and from students volunteering.
 

[#272 Editorial]