The Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) said it won the top prize in the governance category at the 5th Korea ESG Innovation Policy Awards, hosted by the Korean Association for Policy Studies. It is the fifth consecutive year the agency has been honored since 2022.
The award recognized KOCCA for building a public-private cooperation framework with major content companies and laying the groundwork for spreading environmental, social and governance management across the industry.
The Korea ESG Innovation Policy Awards were established to identify and promote outstanding ESG policy cases at public institutions and state-owned enterprises.
Public-Private Framework Brings Together 10 Content Companies
With global markets raising their demands for sustainable management, KOCCA launched the K-Content ESG LEADERS initiative in November last year to strengthen content companies' capacity to respond.
Ten companies are taking part: SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment, JYP Entertainment and HYBE in music; CJ ENM, SBS, Studio Dragon and Contentree JoongAng in broadcasting; and Krafton and Pearl Abyss in gaming.
The companies agreed on four areas of action: practicing environmental responsibility, fulfilling social responsibility, establishing transparent governance, and building networks to spread ESG management. They have shared the sustainable management activities each has pursued and created a basis for cooperation that allows the industry to address shared challenges jointly.
Carbon Calculators Developed to Support Practices on Set
To translate the cooperation framework into tangible results, KOCCA also began developing ESG tools that reflect the characteristics of the content industry.
Working with CJ ENM, the agency released a carbon emissions calculator for broadcasting and video production, and with SM Entertainment it developed one for live performances and events. The tools are meant to help content companies directly measure and manage the carbon emissions generated during production.
Another key initiative was the introduction of ESG-related bonus point criteria in content funding programs. The aim is to encourage companies to voluntarily expand their ESG activities and to help those efforts strengthen their business competitiveness.
Through this, KOCCA plans to have companies treat ESG not merely as regulatory compliance or social responsibility, but as a competitive asset for entering global markets and achieving sustainable growth.
Spreading Large Firms' Know-How to Smaller Content Companies
KOCCA said it will focus going forward on spreading the ESG management experience and practical know-how accumulated by large companies to smaller content firms and across the industry.
Centering on K-Content ESG LEADERS, the agency will continue to pursue cooperation among companies and identify joint projects, while planning to publish a K-Content ESG Management Best Practice Casebook featuring the participating companies' leading examples. The goal is to provide cases that smaller companies can reference in actual management and on production sites, raising ESG capabilities across the industry.
"We will work with the content industry's leading companies to expand ESG management into a shared industry-wide task," KOCCA President Kim Yun-jee said. "We will broaden our support so that the experience and capabilities of large companies reach smaller content firms and lead to stronger, more sustainable global competitiveness for the K-content industry."