A Study on the Necessity of Calligraphy Promotion and Policy Direction
Authors:   The Korean Society of Calligraphy, Kim Hey-Ran 
Published: April 2024

Modern society has transformed from a writing culture to a tapping culture through the daily life of computers and smartphones. As a result, the culture of exclusive attack has changed from an emotional recording culture to a culture of contemplative patience to a culture of impatience that shouts quickly. A culture that was accustomed to expressing emotional implications while writing and drawing changes to an exclusive emotion that strikes, spouts, and attacks while tapping, leading to school violence by being considerate of others, holding back anger, or failing to follow the rules. Therefore, arts and physical education and character education must be strengthened to reduce violent tendencies and cultivate feelings of patience and consideration, and calligraphy is a field that can satisfy this at the same time.
The normalization of calligraphy education is a prerequisite for promoting calligraphy, and the normalization of calligraphy education is to expand calligraphy education in the elementary and secondary curriculum. To this end, an institutional mechanism is needed to experience calligraphy through non-subjects in children's and adolescents, such as a policy to revitalize calligraphy education in art subjects as a pilot project under national support, and to actively support after-school classes or creative experience activities. In other words, if support policies such as accessibility, professionalism, and education budget are prepared at the national level, the ripple effect of calligraphy education can be expected.
In addition, even if professional manpower is trained based on Article 7 of the Calligraphy Promotion Act (cultivation of calligraphy education professionals, etc.), a mid- to long-term policy to supply and demand professional manpower should be prepared. According to the Calligraphy Promotion Act, professional manpower has majored in calligraphy or has been in the calligraphy field for more than 10 years, and after retraining them at a professional manpower training institution, an alternative to where and how to use them is needed. In other words, it is urgent to prepare a policy that can be assigned as professional manpower who can be in charge of research, education, planning, and administration at the national level. To this end, establishing a policy to institutionalize professional manpower into a separate 'calligraphy educator' (tentative name) and assign it to related institutions will provide the minimum opportunity for the calligraphy field to play any social role or contribute.
On the other hand, the proportion of calligraphy in contemporary art is very low. In other words, although the calligraphy population is relatively large, there are still many apprenticeship education and competition-oriented work activities due to the nature of the field, so there are relatively few majors compared to the general art field. In addition, work activities centered on competitions and group competitions rather than individual exhibitions, and works based on generalized composition and similar repetition rather than creative works due to the nature of the event are prominent. For this reason, in other general art fields, there are many cold or sometimes outspoken criticism and disparagement of calligraphy, and even calligraphy is treated very insignificant in contemporary art. However, there is a problem that the art ecosystem is destroyed due to the marginal treatment of calligraphy in the public art market, such as the purchase of works by museums and art galleries, and the provision of invitation exhibition opportunities for artists in each field. It suggested a policy-making direction to solve this problem.