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| ▲ This photo, provided by Hwa&Dam Pictures, shows a scene from 'Guardian: The Lonely and Great.' (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
SEOUL, Apr. 4 (Yonhap) -- The Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (MCST) is set to kick off a 4 billion won-worth project, “Empowering Domestic OTT Libraries,” aiming to strengthen the competitiveness of domestic over-the-top (OTT) contents.
As the first step of this big project, Jeon Byeong-geuk, the first vice minister of the MCST, held an on-site meeting with executives of four leading domestic OTT powerhouses, including TVING, Wavve, Watcha, and U+Mobile, in Seoul on Tuesday. The project is anticipated to be a positive fillip to the number of OTT content produced in South Korea while increasing the content quality including image and sound. From April to November, the budget of 4 billion won will be divided and provided to these four production houses.
The main agenda of this big project is to support releasing remastered versions by improving the image and sound qualities of existing content, while efficiently managing content information and improving user services. The project also aims to provide subtitles for users with hearing disabilities.
The project aims to provide the remastered versions of more than 300 hit works, including the smash-hit “Reply Series,” as well as “Guardian: The Lonely and Great” and “Signal,” with higher resolution (4K). In the meantime, more than 45 works, such as “Under the Queen’s Umbrella” and “Mr. Sunshine,” will have subtitles ready for the hearing impaired.
Meanwhile, more than 640,000 contents will be introduced via the brand-new metadata, which will be operated as standardized data for tailoring recommendations based on artificial intelligence algorithms.
The MCST expects that the project will also benefit the original producers or distributors, contributing to the creation of a mutually beneficial content ecosystem. In addition, the Ministry will invest another 25 billion won for supporting the second half of the production of broadcasted video content while throwing in another 1 billion won to support the production of screen commentaries for the visually impaired.
“This year’s budget for supporting our video content industry, including OTT, is about KRW 123.5 billion, 2.5 times larger than that of last year,” Vice Minister Jeon said. “We will support the growth and development of the domestic industry so that the rest of the world will get to know how mesmerizing K-content is.”
(This article is translated from Korean to English by Ha eun Lee)
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