Wonju One City One Book Reading Campaign started in 2004 and it is a representative citizen-participatory grass-root cultural campaign of Wonju. For the past 16 years, the campaign has engaged more than 450,000 citizens in total. It is a joint cooperation programme led with civic and public sectors combined, including libraries, schools, civic groups, reading clubs, public organizations, and corporations.

Wonju One City One Book Reading Campaign selects one book of the year, encourages every Wonju citizen to read the book of the year concerned, has a variety of the chosen book-related programmes ready, and offers them to citizens every year.

All the programmes are not simply designed to recommend citizens to read the selected book of the year. We don’t stop here. We hold active communication-oriented programmes on & offline, including debates, have citizens voluntarily engage in these programmes, help citizens feel we are not different and after all, we are all citizens of Wonju, help bring all sectors of Wonju together, and contribute to making Wonju a better place for citizens.

Wonju One City One Book Campaign chooses the book that all Wonju citizen can share common ideas with and that are closely relevant to the purposes of Wonju One City One Book Campaign. We contribute to making Wonju a city of sustainable development as well as a culture city of sustainable growth and efficient production.

All the 16 selected books include the values of sustainable development. The selected book of the year brings citizens together and offers moments to feel and share the values that the book delivers. The book, ‘Curitiba of Brazil Breathes’, talked about a city model of ecologically sustainable development and we discussed how we can develop Wonju this way. Through reading of, debating on, and having a series of events about books of ‘Care’, ‘A Grain of Millet’, and ‘On that Day, A Cat Came to Me’, we talked about the values of sharing, sympathizing, and communicating and we went on further to discuss feasible ways to make a sustainable development city of Wonju.

The year of 2016 was a special year. The selected book of 2016 was ‘Cry Out, Playground!’ and we talked about the values and the meaning of democracy.(The years of 2016 and 2017 were very significant years to have Koreans and many people around the world think over and over again what the values of democracy were). The book of 2011, ‘Rescue Operations of the Earth’ offered citizens moments to think about how to respond to climate change of the world. The book of ‘What Items that I like?’ had us think and talk about life creatures and species living in Wonju. Through reading two selected books of ‘Do You Really Know about How to Use Korean Language Well?’ and ‘Korean Traditional Paintings Tell Us about Life of Koreans’, we learned and talked about how advanced our Korean language and culture are and what they mean to Koreans, and we also spent the year sharing their values. ‘Letters from Chojeong-ri Village’, ‘Our People, Koreans who Protect Dok-do Island’, and ‘12 Year-old Dong-gyu, 1940’ had Wonju citizens look back on where we had stood, have stood, and stand now in each phase of the history.

In particular, the year of 2019 marks the 100th year of March First Independence Movement and of the establishment of The Provisional Government of Korea in Shanghai’. Thus, in honor of these two monumental events of Korea, the selected book of 2019 is ‘Sontag Hotel’. With this book, we will share and discuss the values of peace with citizens.

Wonju One City One Book Reading Campaign has helped break the old conventional frame that individuals read books in closed spaces. We have made reading a festival shared with citizens. Wonju One City One Book Reading Campaign has been here to stay as a representative citizen-participatory grass-root reading culture campaign. Especially, Reading books of a variety of subject and expanding its follow-up discussion culture have contributed to the formation and the development of a sustainable local community of Wonju. Besides, We are proud that citizens are increasingly discussing a sustainable development, based on reading a variety of books and their follow-up discussion and issues to think about and work out together. These are of utmost significance to Wonju citizens.

Wonju One City One Book Campaign started with a new idea to contribute to a sustainable development of Wonju city. This idea of a sustainable development was accessible to many Wonju citizens and good governance has helped enhance the cooperation between civic and public sectors.

Theses and papers on One City One Book Reading Campaigns of Wonju and other cities around the country are recently issued and tens of cities in Korea implement One City One Book Reading Campaign in different forms and ways. These prove that reading books and communicating play an important role in our society and One City One Book Reading Campaign is recommended in this perspective.

We break down the Campaign objectives into three in general. Its first objective is to have as many citizens as possible engage in this campaign and make this campaign a reading culture of Wonju. Its second objective is to help integrate all sectors of Wonju and strengthen Wonju’s local community culture through the proliferation of reading and discussion culture. And, its third objective is to have citizens learn the values of a sustainable development in a rapid urbanization and local community development and extend citizen-led discussions further.

We believe that the 16 year-promoted Wonju One City One Book Reading Campaign has established as a representative citizen-participatory grass-root reading culture campaign in Wonju. Family members, neighbors, colleagues, friends, etc of all ages participate in and share the values of the campaign, which has helped contributed to the formation of small community culture groups.

We at Wonju One City One Book Reading Campaign encourage more and more citizens of Wonju to understand and learn the values of a sustainable development and engage in our campaign. Besides, the interest and the participation of citizens will be sure to help contribute to the sustainable development of Wonju.

We at Wonju One City One Book Reading Campaign acknowledge and understand everyone is different in his or her opinion, try to help form a more communicative environment, help enhance Wonju’s community spirit, help contribute to the pluralism of democracy, and make a sustainable and citizen-happy city. We are slowly but increasingly moving closer to these goals.

Wonju One City One Book Reading Campaign is convinced that reading books, communicating, and sharing the values of these activities make life of citizens more richer. This will nourish the healthy and sustainable development of Wonju. We will put these into practice for the next ten years to come.