Strengthening Korea-UK cultural industry ties: One-on-one with Karen Bradley

The UK's culture and sports minister is currently on a visit to Seoul, promoting Korea-UK cooperation
in the cultural industries.
Kwon Jang-ho sat down with Karen Bradley to discuss what her visit means for the future
of the two countries relations.
Let's start with some of the events you've been promoting here in Korea.
Yesterday you launched the UK-Korea Creative Futures.
It's a year long programme of events and activities in Korea promoting UK culture.
What do you hope the Korean people take away from this programme?
I'm really delighted to be here in Korea in launching the programme...
Creative industries is where we can show so much in common, and so many things we can
work together to really prosper with.
And that is the things that perhaps people traditionally think about Britain for, the
sort of music maybe, some of our literature.
But also newer technologies like games industry, e-sports, all sorts of creative tech opportunities,
fintech...there are many, many things that we work on in the UK.
We want to work with Korean companies and we want to work with Korean people.
What aspects of Korea's creative industry has impressed you and what would you like
to take back to the UK, after your time here?
Ooh, so much, I just felt that there is so much innovation and there's so much that Korea
leads in.
If you look at the industries that in the west, in the UK, we think of Korea leading
in, automotive and tech, electronics, these are things that are part and parcel of life
in Britain - People have Korean goods in their homes, and I think the fact that there's so
much going on in Korea to develop those fantastic products, but also to work with British companies
to really to get that absolutely best we possibly can be by working together.
Of course I want to ask about Brexit.
Brexit was the biggest issue coming out of the UK last year.
What impact has that has there been in the creative industries for the UK?
...The way I describe the vote last year, it wasn't a vote for Britain closing its doors
or saying we're not wanting to work with the world.
It was Britain saying actually we want to work beyond 27 member states of the European
Union, with the whole world.
And Korea is exactly the kind of country that we want to work with...
So I think that the message that I want to give is that we want to work with Korea, that
this is the British people saying we are open, we are open for business and we want to work
with businesses here in Korea and countries like Korea.
London 2012 was a huge success, in a sporting sense and a cultural sense as well I feel.
Can you tell us the secret of your success?
And what any advice you can give to PyeongChang, seeing as the Winter Olympics is coming next
year in Korea as well?
Well I'm not sure that I'm in a position to give advice to such a successful country when
it comes to hosting major events, but I think what we're very happy to do...and you know
we have an example with Aggreko... that has just signed a contract to work on
the PyeongChang games, because actually there are British companies with good ideas that
can help to deliver the games in a seamless way.
So things like crowd management, how customer experience, the visitor experience, those
kind of things we're really happy to share from our experiences in 2012.
Thank you for your time and hope you enjoy the rest of your time in Korea.

Strengthening Korea-UK cultural industry ties: One-on-one with Karen Bradley

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