Culture ministry honors 14 magazine figures, led by horticulture publisher Lee Joo-sang

South Korea's culture ministry on Monday awarded state honors to 14 people who have advanced the country's magazine culture, with the top honor going to a publisher who founded the country's first horticulture magazine more than four decades ago.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korean Magazine Association jointly held the ceremony for the 61st Magazine Day at the Korea Press Center in Seoul, where the government handed out one cultural medal, one presidential citation, one prime ministerial citation and 11 ministerial citations.

The cultural medal went to Lee Joo-sang, chief executive of Doseo Chulpangwa. Lee, born in 1944, launched Monthly Horticulture in 1983, the first magazine in the country devoted to the field, and has spent some 43 years spreading agricultural and horticultural expertise. Reporting from farms across the country, the magazine has passed on cultivation techniques and the voices of growers.

Sung Ki-myung, chief executive of Audio Inc., received the presidential citation for publishing Monthly Audio, the country's only magazine dedicated to audio equipment, since 2003. He has served two terms as vice chairman of the magazine association.

Tark Ji-won, publisher of Monthly Modern Religion, took the prime ministerial citation. As the second publisher of the title founded by the late Tark Myung-hwan, he has reported on pseudo-religious groups that have become social problems.

The remaining 11 citations went to people working in regional arts, taxation and finance, design, literature, farming communities, advanced industry and academic research.

Magazine Day commemorates Nov. 1, 1908, when Choe Nam-seon, a pioneer of modern Korean letters, launched the boys' magazine Sonyeon. The government designated the observance in 1965 and has marked it each year by honoring people who have built up magazine culture.

In a statement, Kim Jae-hyun, head of the ministry's culture and media industries office, said the value of reliable planning and reporting, and of writing worth returning to, is growing as information proliferates. "We plan to faithfully include new promotion measures suited to the times in the fourth basic plan for periodical publication promotion so that magazines can meet new readers and markets," he said.