Culture ministry honors 58 libraries, with presidential awards for Incheon and Gochang

The culture ministry said it awarded presidential citations to two libraries and honored 58 in total for their work in 2026, recognizing institutions that expanded reading programs and reshaped their spaces for users.

The presidential awards went to the Seo-gu Library, run by the Incheon Metropolitan City Office of Education, in the public library category, and to Gochang High School in North Jeolla Province in the school library category. Both received a certificate, a cash prize and a plaque at the opening ceremony of the 63rd National Library Conference and Exhibition, held at the Kim Dae-jung Convention Center in Gwangju.

The remaining honors were spread across 56 institutions: six prime ministerial citations, 33 from the culture minister and 17 from the education minister. The prime minister's awards went to four public libraries — Jeonju City Library Kkotsim, Daegu Metropolitan Bukbu Library, Uiwang Central Library and Nonhyeon Library — as well as Seoul Sinhyeon Elementary School and the Army Consolidated Administrative School.

Incheon's Seo-gu Library was cited for turning readers into authors. Through its "read, walk, write" campaign it linked reading families, schools and neighborhoods, and its citizen author school and picture-book author program trained 4,193 citizen writers over three years. It also opened and operates the Gajaeul Dream Children's Library with the local government and works with 598 institutions across the public, private and academic sectors.

Gochang High School won for a library overhaul that turned a collection-centered space into a combined learning area, including a standalone school library and a book cafe named Seongsan Maru. The school built a reading model tied to the surrounding community, which the ministry said helped narrow the education gap between rural and urban students.

Candidates were recommended by 16 metropolitan and provincial offices of education, the education, defense and justice ministries and the Korean Special Libraries Association, drawn from 22,203 public, small, school, special, military and correctional facility libraries as of December 2025. Expert and merit review committees then selected the winners.

"We highly appreciate that the efforts of the awarded institutions have led to the development of library services and the improvement of local culture," said Jeong Hyang-mi, head of the ministry's culture and arts policy office. "The ministry will share and spread their excellent cases to raise the quality of library services and support balanced development of libraries so that everyone, regardless of region or generation, can enjoy library services."