Choi Jung-hwa (L), head of the Corea Image Communication Institute (CICI), talks during a media briefing on the CICI Korea Image Awards ceremony in a hotel in southern Seoul on Jan. 16, 2018. (Image: Yonhap)
SEOUL, Jan. 16 (Korea Bizwire) – A Seoul-based non-profit organization on Tuesday awarded a Korean company and two figures from France and Russia for their work in promoting Korea’s image overseas.
In the Korea Image Awards ceremony, which took place at a hotel in southern Seoul Tuesday, the Corea Image Communication Institute (CICI) presented an award to CJ Group in recognition of the company’s efforts to publicize Korean culture and food outside the country and create an environment where foreigners can “enjoy the gist of Korean culture in everyday life.”
CJ Group runs a movie chain, Korean restaurants and the cable music channel Mnet, which regularly hosts a K-pop festival and cultural conventions around the world.
Sohn Kyung-shik, the group’s chairman, said that CJ, initially a food company, was swift in adapting itself to a rapidly changing environment, and he noted that culture is becoming a huge industry that demands a great amount of content.
“We aren’t doing it for the short term when we push for spreading Korean culture. What we are trying to do is to make the everyday lives of people around the globe be affected by Korean culture,” the chairman said during a media briefing which took place prior to the award ceremony.
He also said that KCON, the Korean cultural convention, has been very successful in the last few years, citing the event in Paris in 2016, which attracted more than 13,000 people from all around Europe.
“I don’t think (the popularity of Korean culture) is a one-off phenomenon. We will try harder to get the cultural boom to run deeper in the coming years,” he said.
The award ceremony, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Foreign Ministry and the Korean Culture and Information Service (KOCIS), also recognized two other people — French lawmaker Joachim Son-Forget and Russian model Angelina Danilova.
Son-Forget, a Korean adoptee, leads a group consisting of 50 Korean and French lawmakers that aims at promoting friendship between the two nations.
Danilova was chosen as the award winner for sharing various aspects of Korean culture, life and nature through her Instagram account, which boasts more than 600,000 followers from all over the world. Living in Korea for almost two years now, she said her interest in K-pop first got her interested in the culture and the country in general.
The event was attended by 700 dignitaries, including business and cultural figures, foreign diplomats and government officials.
(Yonhap)
