In 2007, Novel Toji Fan Club was established by Wonju citizens who took a literary class and completed the regular course of The 1st School of Novel Toji.

Novel Toji Fan Club is a literary association where the course takers have citizens of the next class learn in-depth about novel Toji and literary works and empower them, so that Novel Toji Fan Club becomes a yet more professional literary group. To make this happen, in 2008, Novel Toji Fan Club took charge of running a special class, ‘Novel Toji School’, in cooperation with Pak Kyongni Literary Park that is run by Wonju City Hall. Novel Toji Fan Club has had Novel Toji School class takers learn about, experience, and take field trips on novel Toji and literary works. What stands out in this programme is that citizens who take class have to have a graduation exam. Since 2008, Novel Toji Fan Club has continued to help several tens of citizens, who complete the one year course, graduate from the course.

Toji is an epic novel about Han(feeling of deep sorrows of Koreans) and hope of Koreans. The history background of Toji, whose works were written by a Korea’s iconic writer, Pak Kyongni, starts in 1897(Peasant Uprising) and ends on 15 August 1945(The Freedom Day of Korea).

Novel Toji Fan Club is equal to a citizen school that represents Wonju local community where we learn how to live a life of our own with deep interest in and compassion for all forms of life on earth through novel Toji and the trajectory of novel Toji’s writer, Pak Kyongni, who is admired for her dedication and commitment.

We offer different programmes every year. We invite researchers and people for programmes. Those include researchers who studies novel Toji and Pak Kyongni and persons who had personal relationship with the late Pak Kyongni. We try to reflect variations and incremental depth of our programmes in the programmes every year.

Every year, approximately fifty citizens, who take Novel Toji School-run one-year course, graduate from the school and the year of 2019 marks the 13th year of the school.

There are Novel Toji Fan Club-run, several popular, representative programmes. ‘Toji School for Kids and Children’, ‘Toji School for Youth’, ‘Music Concert on Last Day of October’, ‘Novel Toji Day’, ‘Let’s Send Books to Children of Yanbian, China’, ‘All-night Book Reading at Pak Kyongni Literature Park’, and ‘Come to Pak Kyongni Literature Park and hear Sounds of Narrow-mouthed Frogs’ are some of our popular programmes. In addition to these, we hold an annual event of ‘Writing Letters to Characters in Novel Toji’ on August 15, the day of the Pak Kyongni’s 26 year writing completion of Toji.

We invited Pak Kyongni and held The 1st Toji Day in 2007 with her when she was alive. After she passed away in 2008, we had memorial service.

To commemorate her spirits, all members of Novel Toji Fan Club participated in transcribing 32,000 pages of the late Pak Kyongni’s novel Toji, which took 26 years to complete writing, in squared manuscript papers for 200 Korean characters. Years of writing her novel Toji brought all members to feel the legacy and the literature spirits that she left behind for us.

Novel Toji Fan Club holds a monthly get-together, regular meetings, temporary meetings, and regular general assemblies.

Every year, we go on field trips to Hadong-gun county of Gyeongsannam-do province, way down south of Korea, and Tongyeong city, where is the birthplace of the late Pak Kyongni, in order to exchange programmes about literary works and spirits.

For the last ten years, we have dedicated ourselves to voluntary service to run a variety of programmes of Novel Toji School and many news outlets of broadcasting channels, radio channels, newspapers, magazines, and periodicals have covered us.

As one of literary organizations of Wonju that commit to the development of Wonju’s literature, we will keep working hard for citizens, dedicating to the literature of Wonju, and going farther and further.