▲ Chair Professor Lee Jeong-duk

A nation with splendid cultural heritages is closely related to economy. Italy, for example, is attracting millions of people every year from all over the world to see the Creation of Adam by Michelangelo or The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci and many more. 

Lee Jeong-duk, Chair Professor of Dankook University School of Culture and Art, is a highly praised figure in the field of art management. With his talented leadership and art loving heart, Lee has organized numerous successful exhibitions and contributed to enriching art and culture in Korea.

Lee successfully organized a performance by inviting ballerina Kang Su-jin and Stuttgarter Ballett, hosted the New Year’s Eve Music Concert of the Seoul Arts Center from 1996 by inviting Gum Nan-se as the first conductor, and introduced a package program watching a music concert at the Sejong Center and the New Year’s sunrise the next day at Jeongdongjin; also, he organized a music concert in memory of those who lost their lives to the 9.11 and donated the profits generated from the concert to the US Embassy in Seoul. 

While serving as the director of the Seoul Arts Center, he founded a literary society and a charity group. While working for the Sejong Center, he founded a support group of the Gwanghwamun Culture Forum and a Nangmanpa Society. When union members of the Seoul Arts Center went strike, he took his leadership to settle down the conflict. 

Since 1974, he has helping lepers at St. Lazarus Village from which he came to a realization of the meaning of his life. Borrowing the title of a poem by Kim Nam-jo, he organized a music concert <Because You Are Here>. The concert became famous when Lee, accompanied by renowned fathers and religious leaders including late cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan, flew to Wiesbaden Kurhaus in Germany for a music concert organized for lepers in 2003. 

As a renowned art management specialist, he humbly says that his life is but a shadow of the stage. But the shadow was full of respect, love and service. “Art management is but passion in my life. And the passion will last for as long as I last.”