VOL.69/2024.04

 

Achievements of the “One City, One Book” Movement

 

2022.10.04

 

Seosan-si selected and nominated Uncanny Convenience Store (Namu Bench) for the general public and A Child Who Climbed over a Wall (BIR) for children as books to read together during the “2022 Pan-Citizen One City, One Book Movement: The Book of the Year Proclamation Ceremony” held in the city hall’s situation room on Aug 10, 2022. In April, citizens of Seosan-si recommended a total of 54 books. The library’s steering committee reviewed the books, and two were nominated as the “Book of The Year.”
The book Uncanny Convenience Store is a piece that depicts the joys and sorrows of our neighbors living in this harsh era from a warm and humorous perspective. The novel has a small convenience store on the corner of an alley as its background. Meanwhile, this year’s children’s book was A Child Who Climbed over a Wall, which gives its readers the strength and confidence to face the world while moving forward despite discrimination against class, position, and gender. While promoting two books as the “Book of The Year,” Seosan-si also held various reading events, such as “relay-reading” challenges, book report and review contests, special lectures given by writers, and book clubs. The city formed a culture through events that let citizens read books together, communicate, and connect.

 

 

The “One City, One Book Movement”

 

Seosan-si started its new, voluntary, and local “One City, One Book” movement in 2003. The “One City, One Book” movement, which started in Seattle in 1998, made Seosan-si organize a long-term local book reading movement for its citizens. Seosan-si did not want a typical campaign driven by the local government creating a list of recommended books and running unilaterally and temporarily. Seattle’s “One City, One Book” movement started from a proposal by Seattle Public Library’s librarian Nancy Pearl. At that time, it became successful enough to spread to 90 or more cities in 38 states, among a total of 50 states in the US. Mainly, the Chicago-nominated book To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee saw a huge success in 2001 thanks to the movement.
This movement in the US was first introduced to Korea by professor Doe Jung-Il at Kyunghee University, the so-called godfather of Korea’s reading movement. When he introduced the movement, he started a program called “A National Movement for Building a Book Reading Society.” In his article Chicago’s Craze for the Mocking Bird in Cine 21 released on Sep 1, 2001, he mentioned that Seattle selected Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mocking Bird as the book to read together for all citizens, including adults and children, for seven weeks from Aug 25. The article also stated that the city was engulfed with the ‘Mocking Bird’ craze as the mayor Richard Daley asked citizens to join the movement. In addition, a local news article said, “The public library authority procured 4,000 copies of the novel, but people who could not borrow the book from public libraries went to book stores, emptying aisles of the novel in a brief moment,” giving a glimpse of the hype.
Professor Doe said, “This craze for the ‘Mocking Bird’ is a version of the ‘Building a Book Reading Society’ movement from Chicago. The news that all Chicago citizens are reading this one book is not just a topic in a newspaper. It is something to think about and discuss. Why would a big city like Chicago start such a movement? How was it possible to see such a movement in a big city? What are the capabilities of the people who came up with such an idea? Where did the capabilities come from? It is not hard to guess that the motive behind” One Book, One Chicago “came from the notion that instead of binging videos or games, citizens reading books, thinking about them, and maintaining the reading culture are of value, a way of life, and experience. Even if it is just once a year, the movement can play a pivotal role in improving the community features of a metropolis if all citizens can read the same book and find common issues, like Chicago’s own problems (ex. racial discrimination and unfairness).”

 

 

Professor Doe’s student and book critic Lee Gwon-Woo, whose hometown is Seosan-si, brought the message to real life. He started the movement with Seosan-si under the sponsorship of the Korea Library Association. The book selected in 2003 was The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly (Sakyejul), written by Hwang Sun-Mi, which sold its copyrights to 30 countries around the world, including the US, the UK, and Germany. The novel initially targeted juveniles but was also a good selection for adults to read. Seosan-si promoted sales of the book by putting stickers highlighting the book in major bookstores in town in 2003. At the same time, the local government held book reading and discussion activities by organizing book clubs in libraries downtown. Also, the city displayed illustrations of the book in schools in rotation and held a lecture by inviting the novel’s author.
In his article One City, One Book Movement’s Result and Task in the June 2004 edition of Library Culture, Lee Gwon-Woo argued that the biggest benefit of the “One City, One Book” movement is that “a civil society has a wonderful experience of becoming one under a book.” He mentioned, “the public were originally the ones to read and evaluate. The tradition was long gone in modern society. The most meaningful result of the ‘One City, One Book’ movement was that it revived the long-lost values of book reading in the current era. As people read and discuss, they experience excitement and learn how diverse interpretations can be. Seosan-si failed to see satisfactory results in organizing the adults’ book club but was successful with the juvenile’s book club thanks to the efforts of teachers. To the new generation who are distant from books, the ‘One City, One Book’ movement proved the value of book reading and the reasons for having libraries. It alone can be seen as a success.”

 

The “One City, One Book” Movement Blossoms in Korea

 

The “One City, One Book” movement spread in the US and the world. While Seosan-si was busy with its book-reading movement, Suncheon-si established its first Miracle Library in the same year. The city consolidated with a civil organization for book reading, the Book Culture Foundation, and selected Lighthouse (Moonji Publishing) as the book to read together. This novel, written by Lim Cheol-Woo, has a lively description of division and poverty, in line with the opening of the library. For one year, the city held the “One Library, One Book” movement. Since then, the movement has been adopted in dozens of cities, including Busan, Wonju, Cheongju, Daejeon, Ulsan, Gimhae, and Pyeongtaek. Seoul, home to more than 10 million people, collaborated with the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture and Korea Library Association to host the “One Book, One Seoul” project in 2004 to join the “One Library, One Book” movement. This movement is continued even now and is spreading to libraries nationwide.

 

 

In 2003, professor Yun Jeong-Ok at Cheongju University, who wrote One City, One Book Movements in the US (Joeun Guel Teo), played a leading role in running the “One Book, One Cheongju” movement. In an interview with Kyunghyang Shinmun, he stated, “There were many challenges in starting the ‘One City, One Book’ movement. Some criticized, saying, ‘Why would the local government highlight one book in particular? It is forceful violence.’ One difficulty was that the project team could not spend the budget timely and flexibly since the fund was coming from the city.” Despite the criticism, professor Yun supported the movement saying, “It will serve as a gateway for people to enjoy reading.” Also, he argued, “The list of agenda for any debate is just a format for discussion. Once people start talking, the discussion gets activated. Starting from a single topic, people talk about various issues. Reading is not something one stops after finishing a book. It is a process of sharing, communicating, and going back to reading a different book. It is the core of the ‘One City, One Book movement.’”
The movement started to bloom after the elementary, middle, and high schools began their “Reading One Book in a Semester” campaign. In the 2015 Revised National Curriculum, the Ministry of Education applied “Read One Book in a Semester” to elementary schools’ 1st and 2nd grades in 2017. With it as the start, the department expanded the policy to be applied to the 1st graders of middle and high schools, ensuring that students read one book a semester.

 

* K-Book Trends Vol. 43 – Go to the article about “Reading One Book in a Semester”

 

 

As a book reading movement supporter and the CEO of Book and Education Research Center, Kim Eun-Ha pointed out in the article, Textbook is just a book. Do not misunderstand. in the 454th edition (Dec 20th, 2017) of a bi-weekly publishing industry magazine Planning Meeting, Korea had an absolute dependency on textbooks. He said, “Textbooks contain class materials and activities. The activities include questions and relevant actions. The actions are not accepted as a proposal but rather a mandate one must observe. When students read books and discuss during class, parents and students think textbooks have no progress. Even teachers are reluctant to replace textbook materials with different books. Not taking the safe route of ‘textbook – instruction book – workbook’ in helping students get high scores in standardized multiple-choice tests is an adventure.” The introduction of “Reading One Book in a Semester” to Korea, where teachers and parents used to rely on textbooks, revolutionized the education sector.
In an interview (March 18, 2021) with Naeil News, the policymaker who drafted this policy said, “Many schools and teachers, such as ‘Activities on Reading a Whole Book for Elementary Students,’ ‘Mulkkobang under the Reading Education Branch of the Korean Language Teachers Association,’ which is a group composed of middle school teachers, and ‘Chaek-Tha-Sae’ (a Korean abbreviation meaning ‘teachers making the world a better place with books’), were already running classes by finishing a book and discussing to deepen students’ thoughts.” He added, “it is a learning experience that gives practical lessons, and it is what the 2015 Revised National Curriculum pursues. Thus, the campaign was brought up to the national-level education curriculum.” Also, he emphasized, “Top-down policy costs a lot in time and money, and it is hard to secure policy effectiveness. However, ‘Reading One Book in a Semester’ includes books that reflect the cases in real life.”
In the same interview, professor Seo Su-Hyeon at Gwangju National University of Education said, “The past curriculum had too much to cover, making it hard to give students time to read.” Moreover, he added, “The movement is meaningful in that it gave physical time for students to read a lengthy text for long hours and secured autonomy of teachers.” According to a survey by professor Seo on 4,855 teachers in 2019, 76.4% of the respondents said Reading One Book in a Semester had a positive result.

 

 

Reading books together shows differences in ideas. The difference derives from imagination. After the emergence of AI, creativity is deemed more important than school degrees. Imagination gets nurtured as one reads and discusses ideas in the same book. Creativity is not about creating something out of nothing. It is expressed in the process of finding different ideas. Nowadays, everyone is connected to the world. Humanity needs to connect and collaborate to address emerging issues. A librarian at a public library in Seattle gave birth to the idea of the “One City, One Book” movement. And, it only cost $40,000 to turn Chicago into “One Book, One Chicago.” Such ideas are changing a lot of people’s lives. It is even changing the education method in Korea. It is a hope that “Reading One Book” will become more diverse in various fields.

 

 

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Written by Han Ki-Ho (Head of the Korea Marketing Research Institute)