LG Uplus Unveils 'CSR Advertisement for the Visually Impaired' Featuring Employee Participation

[Asia Economy Reporter Seol Gina Jo] LG Uplus announced on the 18th that it has released the advertisement “Fairy Tales Made by Uplus,” created with the participation of its employees, based on their volunteer activities for the visually impaired.

This advertisement was produced using the volunteer projects in which LG Uplus employees participated to help visually impaired people read: “U+ Hope Library,” “U+ Hope Books,” and “Library That Reads Books Aloud.” Eight employees, representing those who took part in the volunteer activities, appeared directly in the advertisement, and visually impaired singer Lee Sojeong also participated in recording the advertisement song.

The advertisement video tells a fairy tale-like story that gives children, who are excluded from learning because they cannot read books, dreams and hope. It features the rotoscoping technique, which traces motion from live-action footage into illustrations. This technique, often used in Disney works, depicts the surrounding background as live-action while rendering specific characters as illustrations, allowing for a realistic yet fairy tale-like feel simultaneously.

The company explained that rotoscoping was used to express LG Uplus employees and all visually impaired children accompanying them as the main characters, just as everyone becomes the protagonist of the book at the moment of reading a fairy tale.

LG Uplus also donated the reading assistive technology device (reading magnifier) used during the advertisement filming to Seoul School for the Blind. Since 2017, LG Uplus has continued the “U+ Hope Library” project in partnership with the Heart-Heart Foundation, donating reading assistive technology devices to schools for the blind to support visually impaired students’ learning. Every year, they hold an employee charity auction, using all proceeds to support the project. The project has expanded from the first unit in 2017 to the fifth unit currently.

The “U+ Hope Books” activity, which creates electronic books (e-books) for the visually impaired, is also actively underway. The goal is to produce about 250 e-books by the end of this year, focusing on bestsellers and new releases that are highly requested by visually impaired people. Completed e-books are delivered to the “IT Open Library” and the “National Library for the Disabled.”

Baek Yongdae, head of LG Uplus’s CSR team, said, “Only 5% of books published annually are available for the visually impaired, so we have been conducting employee-participation CSR activities to bridge this gap,” adding, “LG Uplus will always be with them to create a world where no one is excluded from learning and visually impaired people can freely enjoy reading books.”