A Look at What We Do  

• Poetry Recitals for New Year’s Day and for the March 1st Independence Movement Day

We hold an annual poetry recital event on the first day of the new year, inviting local notables and citizens. This event is designed to help citizens have a renewed resolution for the new year.

In memory of the March 1st Independence Movement Day, we hold poetry recital event on 1 March every year. This event is held not only to remember the sufferings of the loss of our nation during the Japanese colonial era but also to recall Koreans’ desperate wishes for the independence. The recital event is done with representative poems of the nation’s freedom. Young students are also invited to give their recitals. This helps them to have an awakening moment about the spirits of the March 1 Independence Movement Day.

These two recital events started in 2012.

• Special Lectures on Woman Literature and Literature Classes

We began to offer special classes on woman literature in 2012, which cover a wide range of subjects about philosophy and humanities. These classes also turned out to be good for citizens and potential writers because they were able to find their writing potential and some have become writers. Notable writers and poets were invited to our classes as a lecturer and inspired citizens in literature perspectives.

Once every month, we hold a regular ‘Girls!, Let’s Talk about Poems!‘ programme and discussion sessions designed to keep breaking and going further from where we stand.

We run literature classes of fairy tales to help children and young elementary school students learn humanities spirits that are reflected in the fairy tales. Reading and reading therapy programmes for elementary school students and their parents are also run. These all help children and young students come closer to the literature.

• Exhibitions of Illustrated Poems

- Regular Illustrated Poems Exhibition and Special Exhibition

We began to hold ‘The 1st Exhibition of Illustrated Poems of Wonju Woman Writers’ Association: Spring, Flowers, Love, and Poems’ in April 2010. About 40 different works are displayed and the themes of the exhibition vary every year.

Regular exhibitions are held at various places including Gallery of Wonju Citizens Culture Center and the 1st floor of Wonju City Hall. We also print copies of postcard of illustrated poems and publish book copies of illustrated poems for distribution. Printed copies are distributed at places of public organizations, sports facilities, banks, etc, where citizens visit frequently. This is to help many more citizens share and enjoy the literature.

Works of illustrated poems that are once displayed at places are moved to different places for special exhibitions to have many more citizens enjoy what is about literature at places close to them.

- Exhibitions of Illustrated Poems at Park

Citizens always appreciate illustrated poems at Pak Kyongni Literature Park. This exhibition at the Park is held except for summer.

• Exhibition of Illustrated Poems Honoring Samto Culture Festival

Illustrated poem works by Wonju Woman Writers’ Association members started to be displayed at Samto Culture Festival in 2013. Samto Culture Festival started in 1964 and is run by Agriculture Technology Center under Wonju City Hall.

Samto means ‘three earths/soils’ in Korea and is interpreted as follows; “Human beings are born from the soil, they live with the soil, and they come back to the soil after death”.

Samto Culture Festival is held to appreciate the efforts of farmers who have worked hard for harvesting for one year. Thus, the theme of illustrated poems is naturally related to farming, countryside, sweet hometown, home sweet home, good harvest, families and relatives, and parents. Displayed works are also moved to other places like galleries run by National Agricultural Banks, event sites at countryside, and multi-purpose centers.

In September 2019, we will display 100 illustrated poems including works by other writers of Wonju around the lake side of Yonsei University Wonju Campus.

• Concert on Humanities- Talk Concert with Wonju Local Writers

The concert is a program to learn about who local writers from Wonju are and what they wrote. We talked about Park Geon-ho as our first talk concert figure. Park Geon-ho was born and raised in Wonju. He was a poet and is more widely known as a lyrist in Korea. We invited a writer of children literature from Wonju to our concert and talked about his literature world with him.

We will keep holding talk concerts with writers from Wonju.

• Writing Contest for Multi-cultural Families in Gangwon-do Province

To help and encourage multi-cultural families to enjoy cultural and literary life, we held ‘The 1st Writing Contest for Multi-cultural Families in Gangwon-do Province’ in 2013. In the 2nd Writing Contest, we took more entries from all over counties of Gangwon-do province. Women who have left their home country to get married to Korean men became wives here in Korea and they gave a birth to children. Life is often hard because they have to adapt to new environment and learning Korean language and expressing themselves in a proper manner are challenging for them.

Writing contest for multi-cultural families is believed to have offered a good opportunity to express themselves in a more confident way. Multi-cultural families and their young students were found pleased with it. We put works and entries of writing contest together and published book copies for distribution.

• Wonju Woman Writers Award

We had a general meeting of Wonju Woman Writers’ Association in 2012 and agreed to establish an award for woman writers in Wonju to help have them feel more proud of their creative work and also to enhance the morale of woman writers. The year of 2012 was the first year. To secure a fair evaluation, we adopted the policy of an assesment by outside, independent judges. The award ceremony is held in the publishing event of ‘Wonju Woman Writers’ Literature’ in November every year. The year of 2019 will mark the 8th year for its award ceremony.

• Activities of Poetry Recital Section of Wonju Woman Writers’ Association

Wonju Woman Writers’ Association has its Poetry Recital Section. Its poetry recital section consists of writers who got a private license for poetry recital. Twice a month, we have our members visit senior care centers and care facilities for persons with disabilities including inmates of Wonju prison. This activity is voluntary and it is designed not only to help communicate with citizens who enjoy literature far lesser than other people but to help heal their mental loss or suffering. Especially for bedridden senior citizens and senior day care centers, our members give poetry recitals to have them recall good memories of their good, old days and help them become mentally healthy with soft sentiments of the literature.

• Publication of Wonju Woman Literature

Starting in 2010, we published Wonju Woman Literature. It was our first regular publication. In 2018, we brought the 9th publication out and 2019 will mark our 10th year of the publication of Wonju Woman Literature. We will issue a special publication this year to commemorate the 10th year.

Wonju Woman Literature includes a variety of subjects such as poems, traditional three-stanza Korean poems, essays, special lectures on the culture, literature classes, literature theories, awarded literary works of woman writers, illustrated poems, travel literature works, photographs, etc. We put all of these literary works together to publish copies in November every year.

• Publication of Illustrated Poems

We periodically publish the collection of poems for New Year’s Resolution, pictorial poems, and illustrated poems for Pak Kyongni Literature Park exhibition and share them with citizens.

• Collection of Awarded Works of Gangwon-do Multi-cultural Families Writing Contest

We put together awarded works from writing contest and published ‘I Am Happy’ and ‘Darling, I Love You!’. Published copies of these two collections were distributed and displayed in multi-cultural family support centers in Gangwon-do province, citizen welfare and support centers under Wonju City Hall, and public facilities. These publications have had citizens learn how wives from countries outside of Korea who are wedded to Korean men and their families are becoming increasingly Korean.

• Collection and CDs of Poetry Recitals

The financial support of Wonju Voluntary Service Center has made it possible to publish the hard copies and CDs of poetry recitals, ‘Darling, I Love You!’. These copies an CDs of this poetry recitals were also distributed to care facilities where senior citizens are taken care of. By putting copies and CDs where they are easy to find, elderly citizens in care centers are able to have far easier access to the material for healing and enjoying the literature more in a relaxed environment.