Letters | Why pop culture is no defence against youth unrest, whether in Hong Kong or Korea
- South Korea is enjoying unprecedented pop culture success, yet young Koreans have been a driving force behind recent protest movements. Hong Kong’s creative industry should indeed be revived, but for the right reasons
However, I must take issue with his premise. He says the decline in Hong Kong pop culture is “one of the major reasons” for young people’s embrace of politics, and he invokes Japan and South Korea as countries that “have developed long-term strategic policies that actively deploy pop culture” and that have “offered spiritual sustenance to society and its young people”.
The implication is that if Hong Kong’s pop culture scene was thriving, young people would eschew politics and “channel their vigour and thought into creative businesses and innovation”.
Reviving Hong Kong’s creative industry is a worthy goal. Let’s do it for the right reasons, though. Do it because it will boost the economy, bolster the city’s cultural cachet, and bring more art into the world, not because it may mollify young people.
A healthier arts scene will not address increasingly precarious employment, expensive housing, and an unresponsive government on its own. To insist otherwise is to be absurd enough to belong in one of Stephen Chow’s scripts.
Matthew Higgins, Prince Edward
