[Harumanbo Harucheonja] "The crisp feeling of writing down was so enjoyable"

Kyobo Bookstore, 2023 Handwriting Contest Call for Entries
Promoting Handwriting Culture Campaign Since 2015

"One day, as I became accustomed to digital devices, writing by hand felt awkward, so I started transcription. The feeling of writing crisply on paper, the sensation my hand remembers, was so enjoyable. I will never forget this feeling and will always support the Kyobo Handwriting Contest." Shin Suhyun (48) won the top prize in last year's 8th Kyobo Handwriting Contest hosted by Kyobo Bookstore by writing out an excerpt from Ogawa Ito's . The content was about how handwriting ages along with a person.

Food and sentences by Kim Hyenam (81), who won the top prize at last year's handwriting contest (by Hideko Nakagawa)

Kim Hyenam (83) won the top prize with an excerpt from Nakagawa Hideko's . Kim said, "I thought it was amazing just to pass the preliminaries at over eighty years old, but to win the top prize is incredible. I think it might be the result of copying the Bible by hand into a notebook for more than three hours every day after retirement. Just thinking about buying lots of my favorite pens and notebooks with the prize money makes me happy already," she shared her thoughts.

Kyobo Bookstore has been running the ‘Handwriting Culture Expansion Campaign’ since 2015 to promote handwriting widely as a solution to the side effects of digital communication. The campaign includes the Kyobo Handwriting Contest, where participants write sentences from books by hand and submit them; the Everyday Handwriting event, where people showcase their unique handwriting on social media; and free fonts (handwriting fonts) that capture the emotions of handwriting contest winners. The Handwriting Culture Expansion Committee, chaired by poet Shin Dalja, organizes the handwriting contest.

Shin Su-hyun (48), who won the top prize at last year's Kyobo Handwriting Contest, Tsubaki Stationery Shop (Ogawa Ito, author)

This year’s handwriting contest started on the 2nd. The preliminaries run from the 2nd to July 3rd, with 300 participants advancing to the finals held from July 21st to August 7th. Anyone, domestic or foreign, can participate, and judging is divided into children, youth, and general categories. The application process is simple. Select a "sentence from a book" that moved you, write at least 50 characters on the entry form, and submit. Through the final judging, 10 top prizes and 20 runner-up prizes will be awarded with certificates and prizes.

The benefits of handwriting include improvements in concentration, memory, thinking ability, and expression. According to Kyobo Bookstore, Dr. Virginia Berninger of the University of Washington conducted an experiment with elementary students and found that children who wrote by hand thought of and expressed more words at a faster pace than those who did not. Seo Yooheon, director of the Korea Brain Research Institute, stated that children who only spoke aloud remembered 33%, whereas those who combined hand movements remembered up to 90%, showing that handwriting helps improve memory.

A research team from Princeton University and the University of California compared note-taking on laptops versus handwriting among college students and found that students who wrote by hand had a significantly better understanding of the class. Professor Yoo Jungseon of the International St. Mary’s Hospital Longevity Medicine Center revealed that among the elderly, those with hobbies involving frequent hand use had about 40% less memory impairment.