Event at Yeongildae Haesangnugak Area Expected to Attract Over 50,000 Participants Nationwide by Late September
Mayor Lee Gang-deok Urges Citizens to Show Interest and Join in Spreading Reading Culture
Pohang City, the first local government in Daegu and Gyeongbuk to be selected as the host city for the Korea Reading Festival, is actively operating the annual reading festival programs.
At the end of March, the city held a proclamation ceremony for "Pohang, City of Books," attended by numerous reading and cultural figures, and is collaborating with organizations such as the Gyeongbuk Content Agency and the Reading Society Culture Foundation to prepare diverse programs.
Through the Korea Reading Festival Pohang website, the city is conducting a "Reading Relay," where teams read books together, and a "Reading Marathon," a reading challenge that combines reading and marathon running by converting one page of a book into one meter of marathon distance.
Additionally, programs such as "Book Pride," where participants upload photos taken with books at libraries on Instagram and receive prizes through a draw, and "Lighthouse, Illuminating Sentences," where participants write sentences from the books they are reading that they want to recommend to others, are also being operated.
Offline, annual programs include the 2024 Lecture Concert combining lectures and performances, Humanities in Pohang, and the lecture series "The History of Everything in the World," conducted in collaboration with POSTECH.
For more detailed information on various lectures, exhibitions, and experiences, please refer to the Korea Reading Festival Pohang website.
The main event of the 2024 Korea Reading Festival Pohang is scheduled to be held from September 27 to 29 for three days at the Yeongildae Haesangnugak area, with over 50,000 participants expected nationwide.
Mayor Lee Kang-deok said, "It is very meaningful to hold a nationwide reading culture event in Pohang, a representative industrial city," and added, "We are preparing various programs that citizens can enjoy throughout the year as a city of books, and we hope citizens take an interest and participate in spreading the reading culture."
The Korea Reading Festival is a nationwide local government contest project hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and organized by the Korea Publication Industry Promotion Agency. Since 2014, one local government that leads reading promotion each year is selected and proclaimed as a book-reading city, and the largest reading festival in the country is held in September, the Reading Month, contributing to the spread of reading culture as a national event.
To ensure the successful hosting of this year's Reading Festival Pohang, the city signed a business agreement with the Korea Publication Industry Promotion Agency, a specialized institution under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism related to reading and publishing, and formed and operates the 2024 Korea Reading Festival Pohang Promotion Council composed of experts such as librarians, bookstore owners, publishers, and university professors for planning and advising various reading-related policies.
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