New York Times 09/09/2004
By Randy Kennedy

sk anyone at City Hall: bringing the Olympics to New York City is not an easy job. A group of ambitious businessmen and social activists have discovered that the same thing applies not only to the kind of Olympics that feature pole vaulting and parallel bars but also to a much different kind that would match the cultural skills of contestants from around the world.

In early 2000 three Korean men – Seok Hyun Hong, a wealthy Seoul newspaper publisher; Jang Hong Koh, a holistic martial arts grand master and businessman; and the Rev. Kiyul Chung, a United Methodist minister and longtime grass-roots organizer for Korean reunification – envisioned an Olympics of traditional arts as a way to promote peace and to draw the world’s cultures together, in much the same way that the Olympic Games strive to do.The first problem, however, was settling on a name for the competition.

“We received a letter, a very, very nice letter, from the International Olympic Committee, stating that no one else was allowed to use the Olympic name,” Mr. Chung said, sitting the other day in the sun-filled 72nd-floor offices in the Empire State Building that the men’s organization rented recently as its headquarters. “So we eventually decided that the name would be the World Culture Open.” The group also decided that to stress the international nature of the idea, the first competition would be held in New York.

But the group’s first news conference to announce the bold idea, held last April at the Chelsea Piers, went almost completely uncovered by the city’s newspapers or television stations. “It’s not easy to get attention here,” Mr. Chung said, smiling.

Still, in a city where money, determination and an ambitious idea are still valid currency, the group persevered and has brought its Olympics to the city long before 2012. Tonight at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, the World Culture Open will present its first three prizes of $100,000 each to groups that have demonstrated achievements not only in the arts – mostly theater, dance and music – but also to those that are leaders in humanitarian service and innovators in holistic healing.

Among the finalists are the Boys Choir of Harlem, the Chinese Theater Circle of Singapore and the Barefoot College of India, which addresses problems of polluted drinking water and poor education in that country.

The organizers have attracted Youssou N’Dour, the legendary Senegalese bandleader, and several other well-known international entertainers to perform during the event. After the Lincoln Center ceremony, the competition will shift to Korea, where the cultural groups will compete for other prizes in ceremonies in Seoul, South Korea, and Pyongyang, North Korea, from Sept. 11 through 19.

While the competition might sound esoteric even in a deeply multicultural city like New York, its founders say they view it as advancing a very simple idea: countries and cultures often divided by politics can easily and frequently unite over the arts, humanitarianism and health.

They see the World Culture Open as a combination of the Olympics and the Nobel Peace Prize to encourage and provide money for arts groups that emphasize cultural understanding, something they feel neither the United Nations nor other international groups do in a comprehensive way.

“You see Indians and Pakistanis in opposition to each other, and then when you observe them engaging in cultural things, they’re brothers,” said Michael Shank, a spokesman for the organization who has worked as a consultant for nongovernmental aid groups in Asia. “The cultural aspects go back so many centuries.”

Though little known in the West, Mr. Hong is a familiar figure in South Korea. The publisher of one of the country’s largest newspapers and the president of the World Newspaper Association, he was arrested in 1999 for tax evasion. He admitted to the charge and was given a fine and suspended sentence, but his supporters say the case was largely politically motivated: his newspaper, Joongang Ilbo, favored the losing candidate in the 1997 South Korean presidential election.

Even as the group prepares for its big night, it is still having some troubles. The actor Val Kilmer was signed on to serve as the host of the awards ceremony tonight, but organizers said yesterday that it was not clear whether he would attend. Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations, was invited to speak at a related conference tomorrow at the United Nations, but he will probably be able to provide only a videotaped address, the organizers said.

Still, they believe that the Lincoln Center event, and the money being given away, show that they are serious. And they intend for the competition to become much better known when they mount it again in 2006 and every two years after that.

“In the beginning people would laugh at us and say: ‘Is anybody going to want to participate? Where are you going to get the money?’ ” said Mr. Chung, who has long worked as a pastor in Maryland. But donors from around the world have given to the group, registered as a nonprofit, and almost 200 of cultural and humanitarian organizations signed up to compete for the awards.

Over the next few years the group, which has offices in New York and Seoul, plans to open branches in Beijing, São Paulo, Cairo, Paris and several other cities. And its goal is to raise the amount of its prize money, to as much as $500,000 apiece, to try to rival the Nobel Prizes, which now award a little more than $1 million per prize.

But the group joins dozens of other well-meaning but still relatively obscure organizations that now give out prizes of hundreds of thousands of dollars and still strive for attention, like the $1 million Dan David Prizes for outstanding scientific, technological, cultural or social impact on our world; the $1 million Zayed Environmental Prize; and the $500,000 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research.

“This is an unborn baby so far,” Mr. Chung said. “We are about to see what kind of child it is going to be.”

Dr. Walter J. Turnbull, the artistic director of the Boys Choir of Harlem, said he hoped not only that the choir would win the award but that the cultural Olympics would continue.

“I think it’s a noble way and really one of the wonderful ways to spread understanding among peoples,” he said. “In music and dance there are many common things. And when it’s done, particularly in our case, with children, it has a lasting effect. It really stays with them.”