Chairman Kim Hyun-ki of Seoul Metropolitan Council Congratulates the 1st Seoul Arts Award Recipients

Kim Hyun-ki, Chairperson of the Seoul Metropolitan Council (People Power Party, Gangnam 3rd Electoral District), attended the award ceremony of the first-ever ‘1st Seoul Arts Awards’ held this year on the 28th, congratulating the recipients who became the inaugural winners.

The Seoul Arts Awards were established to provide artists with motivation for creation and to offer citizens opportunities to enjoy outstanding works.

Among the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture’s selected supported works, awards are given in five fields: theater, dance, music, traditional arts, and visual arts. One Grand Prize (selected from the top awards), five Excellence Awards, and five Merit Awards are presented, totaling 10 works or artists.

On this day, the Grand Prize was awarded to Heo Yoon-jeong’s traditional arts piece ‘Akgaakmu ? Jeoljeong 絶靜’. The Excellence Awards went to the theater work ‘Cornerstone Maeng’, the music piece ‘Jeong Bo-kyung Dance Production "Hello, My Gourm?"’, the dance work ‘Music Today Yul, Dong, Seon’, the traditional arts piece ‘Heo Yoon-jeong Akgaakmu ? Jeoljeong 絶靜’, and the visual arts work ‘Lee Eun-woo Right Angle Mind’. The Merit Awards were given to the theater work ‘Rabbit Hole Theatre "Jung Hee-jeong"’, the music piece ‘Jung Hyung-il Ballet Creative’, the dance work ‘Team Phang Ensemble Sound on the Edge’, the traditional arts piece ‘Kim Yong-sung Ryu - Child of the Abyss’, and the visual arts work ‘Don Seon-pil Goe·Su·In’.

In his congratulatory speech, Chairperson Kim Hyun-ki said, “Within the Seoul Arts Awards lies praise and support for artists who have steadfastly walked the path of pure arts despite various hardships,” and opened by stating, “Recently, AI technologies such as ChatGPT have been heating up the art world, but the history of art is a history of challenges and responses against change.” He continued, “As long as great artists who have expanded humanity’s possibilities by using countless challenges of the era as stepping stones exist, humanity will leap forward together with culture, and cities will advance into the future leveraging culture as a fulcrum. The Seoul Metropolitan Council will also spare no effort in providing diverse support so that Seoul can become a city of inspiration that makes the hearts of great artists beat.”