2007 Daesung Global Contents Forum Program

       09:30 – 10:00    Registration

       10:00 – 10:10    Opening Remarks/Younghoon David Kim, Daesung Group

       10:10 – 10:15    Congratulatory Address

       10:15 – 10:20    Video Messages

       10:20 – 10:40    Opening Lecture

       10:40 – 11:10    “The Use of Mass Entertainment to Send Moral and Sound"

Messages” /Richard Taylor. Weta Workshop

       11:10 – 11:40    “Real World Games: Serious Games About Serious
                               Issues”/Suzanne

Seggerman, Games for Change

       11:40 – 11:50    “Brain Training”/Dr. Shlomo Breznitz,CogniFit, Ltd.

       11:50 – 12:20    “Medicine 4 Fun:  Rx for Effective Knowledge Delivery””
                             /Dr. Wang

Haibo, China Liver Transplant Registry

       12;20 – 12:30     Summary and Information on Afternoon Sessions
                             /Suzanna Oh,

Daesung Group

       12:30 – 14:00     Luncheon

       14:00 – 16:30     Small Group Discussions (Film, Game I, Game II, EU Learning)

For many years it was believed that cognitive skills were fixed at birth and immutable throughout
life.  Consequently, it was genetic luck more than
anything that we saw as determining the most
important feature of a young child, its intellectual
potential. 
However, recent brain research demonstrated the
enormous plasticity of the human brain and its ability
to respond to external challenges.  A variety of
mechanisms, which indicate the usefulness of brain
training, have been discovered.  These opened an
entirely new set of opportunities for lifelong
improvement of cognition.

The ability to enhance cognitive skills such as:
attention, perception and memory has direct impact on quality of life, since these basic skills play a role in everything we do.  But nothing can match the importance of training young brains during their formative school years.  For it is then that cognition mediates the entire schooling effort and can significantly augment its impact and successes.

Thus, while the school provides useful new information, the parents, as well as the teachers, can both contribute to the sharpening of the tools that acquire this new information.  Such an investment in advancing basic cognitive skills changes everything. 

CogniFit embarked on developing sophisticated training programs for people of all ages.  These programs share certain basic features.  Chief among them is the need for effective individual assessment, in order to maximize the adaptivity of the training.  It is critical to find the optimal level of challenge for each child.  The interconnectivity between the various elements of cognition is yet another central feature of the training program.  Thus, each training task contributes to more than one specific skill and they reinforce each other.

The lecture will demonstrate the case for cognitive training and illustrate CogniFit’s approach to the problem.

Videogames are increasingly ubiquitous. More and more people around the world are playing games, and not just "boys in basements". Games rival
Hollywood box office revenues year after year. And as
this technology matures, there is a new trend emerging: harnessing the power of this popular medium for more "serious purposes".  Poverty, global conflicts, the
environment.  Why?  Games let people live in new
worlds, try on new behaviors, inhabit roles and
perspectives that are otherwise unavailable to them. 
They can provide rich learning environments for
complex situations, and a safe place for practicing new behaviors.  And they’re deeply engaging.
Games for Change (G4C) is a new organization,
supporting what many people see as a new field: Real World Games with Real World Impact.  Co-founder and President Suzanne Seggerman will give an overview of this new field and will show some of the leading games:
Peacemaker, a game to foster peace in the Middle East; Darfur Is Dying, set in a
Sudanese refugee camp; Food Force, a game created by the UN's World Food
Programme to address world hunger.

Games for Change will also be launching their South Korea chapter at this event.

Mass media plays a vital role in our every day lives.  It is all around us, entering our public and private
worlds in a multitude of forms – many of which are
highly engaging and evocative, unconsciously    
commanding our attention. Like most things in the
world, what we see and hear is often guided by the
hand of desire.  What we want, we get. It is democracy at its most powerful – and that makes it worthy of
serious consideration.  Producers of mass media
have a position of power and responsibility when
communicating their messages to the world.

With the understanding that we are all highly
influenced by the images and sounds we are bombarded with every day, it is a necessity of entertainment providers – especially those of us who aim our work at young people – to thoughtfully consider the moral compass as we deliver messages and information to the world through our chosen medium.  In the end, what are we doing if not using pictures, music and stories to send out to the world an infinite range of personal, political or moral beliefs?

When you consider that LOTR reached hundreds of millions of viewers world wide and other mass media entertainment juggernauts have the capacity to reach across cultures, countries, gender and age it is a dramatic and highly influential tool for communicating morally sound and thought-provoking information.  The medium of film and television will always have the capacity to be one of pure entertainment but also woven into this is the need to tell stories that help inspire young people’s paths through life.

    It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the Daesung Global Contents Forum 2007 held in celebration of Daesung Group’s 60th anniversary.

I extend my sincere appreciation to Mr. Kim Jong Min, Minister of
Culture and Tourism, for his congratulatory remarks; and to Mr. Lee
Eo Ryeong, former Minister of the Ministry of Culture; Ms. Cho Bae Sook, Chairwoman of the
National Assembly Culture & Tourism Committee; Ms. Jane Coombs, New Zealand Ambassador
to Korea; Wang Guohua, Chairman & Publisher of    Ta Kung Pao newspaper in Hong Kong; and
our panel of international culture contents experts.

I consider the culture contents industry the “filial daughter of business.” If the shipbuilding,
automobile, and steel industries were the filial sons of Korean business in the past, the culture
contents industry is the new paradigm for national growth strategy toward becoming a world leading economic power.

We have invited international experts in various high-growth industries such as film, games, and
education to this forum under the theme of ‘Entertaining Education.’ This forum, I believe, will be a
meaningful time where future directions for the edutainment industry can be assessed and research
promoted on the social benefits of contents.

At the Daesung Global Contents Forum 2007 I highly anticipate the discovery of the large-scale
potential of the cultural contents industry, the analysis of world trends in the industry, and the exchange of valuable information and ideas.

I would like to close by expressing my sincere thanks and appreciation to the Korea Culture and
Content Agency, the Korea Game Industry Agency, the Korean Federation of  Teachers'
Associations, the Korean Film Council, and the New Zealand Embassy Korea for their sponsorship of this forum May the grace of God be with you all.

Thank you.

 

                                                                                                                    Younghoon David Kim

Chairman & CEO, Daesung Group

Chairman, FKI Committee on the Cultural Industry