When President Park Geun-hye returned to work early this month following her five-day vacation here, she vowed to put cultural enrichment at the top of her agenda for the second half of her presidency.

On Saturday, she once again emphasized the importance of cultural enrichment in her Liberation Day address, calling it one of the two growth engines that will lead the country's economic leap, along with her flagship policy, dubbed the "creative economy," aimed at turning creative ideas into real business opportunities.

Park's predecessors have also pushed for similar policies to culturally enrich the country but none of them have put so much importance on them as her.

Since taking office in 2013, the Park administration has made efforts to enhance the public understanding of humanity through various programs aimed to encourage humanity studies and the world's awareness of traditional Korean culture while promoting the cultural contents industry, an umbrella term encompassing publishers, broadcasters, advertisers and firms producing music, computer games, animations, movies, musicals and other creative content.

For artists, it remodeled 13 former industrial facilities around the country, including an obsolete power plant in Seoul, into workspaces for sharing and expanded welfare programs for those in economic trouble.

"Culture Day," initiated by the administration to increase the people's exposure to cultural opportunities, especially became an iconic program for its cultural enrichment drive.

Free or discounted cultural programs are available at museums, palaces, movie theaters and concert halls on "Culture Day," the final Wednesday of each month.

Despite the program's limitation to mostly public facilities, many say it has contributed to increasing people's access to culture and promoting the government's cultural enrichment policy.

Political analysts and presidential officials say Park's stress of cultural enrichment as she turns into the second half of her presidency is a strong expression of her will to make it the country's new growth engine.

According to a set of specific plans announced by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on Tuesday, the government is expected to focus on rediscovering the beauty of traditional Korean culture and using it to improve the nation's external image and tourism and other business opportunities and support creators of cultural contents.

For this, the ministry said it will open a new office cluster for venture start-ups in the contents industry in late November.

Located in the former office building of the Korea Tourism Organization in central Seoul, the facility named "Cel" will be home to about 140 start-ups and be equipped with contents production facilities, according to the ministry. It will also have a government facility for providing legal, investment and export consult services for the companies as well as a hall for performing their creative contents.

The ministry also announced a plan to create "K-Experience," a multipurpose cultural center near Gyeongbok Palace in central Seoul, in cooperation with Korean Air Lines Co., the nation's top air carrier.

The center will be made into a four- to five-story building with a space where visitors can see Korean master artisans working on their craft and buy their products as well as a theater, an exhibition hall, restaurants, cafes and a parking lot, according to the company.

The ministry and the company refused to unveil exactly when the cultural center will be completed but said the first-phase construction will likely be finished by 2017.

Also by next year, the government plans to increase the number of overseas Korean cultural centers from the current 28 to 33 and remodel the gymnastics stadium in Seoul's Olympic Park into a 15,000-seat outdoor concert hall for K-pop. (Yonhap)