*This content was translated by AI.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (Minister Choi Hwi-young) and the Korea Communications Commission (Chairman Kim Jong-chul) will greatly strengthen support for digital transformation and content production capabilities of local and small and medium-sized media companies in 2026, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said on the 27th.
This is a measure designed to realize the new government's national task of restoring the publicity of media by strengthening the publicity and diversity of local media and expanding support for local and small media suffering from management difficulties amid changes in the digital media environment.
First of all, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will significantly expand the support budget for local and small broadcasters from 3.5 billion won in 2025 to 14.8 billion won this year through the Korea Press Promotion Foundation. It has set aside 3.5 billion won (1.3 billion won in 2025) to support local broadcasters' coverage, and has also set aside 7.9 billion won in new budgets to support digital transformation. Support through public service advertisements is also worth 3.4 billion won, which will be strengthened compared to last year (2.2 billion won in 2025).
To strengthen the content competitiveness of local and small broadcasters, the U.S. National Assembly will expand its support budget from 4.4 billion won last year to 5.4 billion won this year. The government plans to increase the budget for producing regional-oriented programs in various fields, including programs that utilize local culture and resources, by KRW 1 billion compared to last year, and continue to support content distribution and professional capacity-building education.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will also greatly strengthen support for local newspapers. This year, the Regional Newspaper Development Fund raised a total of 11.8 billion won, an increase of 3.5 billion won from last year, and will focus on strengthening the digital capabilities of regional newspapers and improving the quality of in-depth reporting. In particular, the budget for the Local Newspaper Proposal Project, which supports innovative ideas of local newspapers, has more than doubled from 300 million won to 2 billion won last year, and the budget for Planning and Reporting Support, which encourages in-depth coverage of local community issues, has also doubled to 1 billion won compared to last year.
In addition, the budget for "Digital Coverage Equipment Rental" has been increased to 3.05 billion won (1.65 billion won in 2025) to respond to changing news consumption patterns and help produce high-quality digital content. Through this, it plans to accelerate digital transformation of local newspapers and increase content competitiveness by expanding support for the latest equipment such as drones.
"Local media is key to supporting local residents' right to know and local democracy," Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism Minister Choi Hwi-young said. "We will support the public interest function of local media by supporting content production capabilities and improvement of the reporting environment so that we can deal with local community issues in depth."
"I think the role of local broadcasting is important in establishing community identity amid the crisis of local extinction," said Kim Jong-chul, chairman of the U.S.-North Korea Communications Commission. "We will spare no support to help local broadcasting secure competitiveness and create a sustainable development foundation with differentiated regional-specific content."
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*This content was translated by AI.
