korean essay writing competition 2020

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essay competition

Past winners, sijo competition, how to write sijo, sijo resources, teaching sijo, wisijo competition, the 2021 sejong writing competition is now open., submission deadline: april 30, 2021 (11.59pm cdt).

Application form

Essay category

Focusing on introducing students and young adults to Korean culture and history through literature, our essay category utilizes folk tales and contemporary literature to explore Korean culture, past and present. All required readings are available from our website.

Adult division (age 30 and younger) : Contestants are to read Yi Sang's short story "The Wings" and write an essay in response to the provided prompt. Senior division (grade 12 and younger) : Contestants are to read both Choi Inho's short story "The Poplar Tree" and Yi Munyol's "The Old Hatter", and write an essay in response to the provided prompt. Junior division (grade 8 and younger) : Contestants are to write an essay in response to one of two provided prompts regarding a Korean folktale of the contestant's choice. Contestants must choose one of the stories listed on our junior competition page .

Sijo category

Our sijo category is divided into the adult sijo division , open to everyone age 19 and older, and the pre-college sijo division , open to students age 18 and younger.

Created in collaboration with the Korea Institute at Harvard University, the goal of our sijo category is to introduce students to a lesser-known style of poetry, the traditional Korean sijo. Read about how to write sijo , or see last year's winning entries .

Annual Wisconsin Sijo Competition

The Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Sejong Cultural Society are delighted to announce the introduction of a new annual sijo competition open to poets of all ages. This competition is only open to residents of Wisconsin.

About the Sejong Writing Competition

Mission : The goals of the Sejong Writing Competition are to discover children and young adults talented in writing and to encourage them to learn and write about Korean and its culture. Through this writing competition we hope to increase the awareness and understanding of Korea’s cultural heritage amongst the younger generations growing up in the United States.

Eligibility : This competition is open to all residents of the US and Canada regardless of ethnic background.

Sponsors : The Sejong Writing Competition is supported in part by grants from the LTI Korea, the Daesan Foundation, the Doosan Yonkang Foundation, and the Academy of Korean Studies.

2020 Korean Literature Essay Competition UK

Deadline: 28 August 2020

This year the International Institute of Korean Studies (IKSU) at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) will host the “2020 Book Essay Contest”. Applicants are asked to respond to one of three Korean novels that have been translated in English.

There will be prizes for the top five essays with an online . Award ceremony planned for late October 2020.

The essays will be judged by an assessment panel consisting of academics in Korean Studies and professionals in Korean literature.

• First Prize (one place): a book voucher, value of £500
• Second Prize (one place): a book voucher, value of £300
• Third Prize (three places): a book voucher, value of £100 each

Read one of the following three books and send your essay to the email address below.

• The Vegetarian - by Han Kang (2015)
• Autobiography of Death - by Kim Hyesoon (2018)
• Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 - by Cho Nam-Joo (2020)
• Essay: Max 2,000 words (in English) responding to one of the three books in the contest, to be submitted in an MS word Word file only.
• Please also include your full name, a short bio, and your email address with your essay.
• Submission Deadline: 28 August 2020
• Send your Essay to: [email protected]

The results will be announced through the IKSU website in October 2020, with the winners also will being contacted by email.

The Book Essay Contest is funded by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea), which is an affiliate organization to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of the Republic of Korea, and the IKSU.

The UCLan IKSU Book Essay Contest is open to the public.

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Stanford University

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

Ninth Annual Writing Prize in Korean Studies

The Korea Program Prize for Writing in Korean Studies recognizes and rewards outstanding examples of writing in an essay, term paper, or thesis produced during the current academic year in any discipline within the area of Korean studies, broadly defined. This competition is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. The prize will be awarded at a special ceremony in the fall, and the first-place winner will receive a certificate and $1,000; Honorable Mention winner(s) will receive a certificate.

Application Deadline:  May 31, 2020 Eligible Students:  All currently-enrolled Stanford students Application Instructions:  Submit the following items by email to  John Groschwitz , CEAS Associate Director.

• One Korean studies paper/essay (minimum 20 pages double-spaced, Times 12pt., 1″ margins)
• One recommendation letter from a Stanford professor (emailed by the professor directly to  John Groschwitz )

Previous Prize Winners

2019: Taehwa Hong, " North Korea in the Soviet-Albanian Dispute " 2018: Sungmoon Lim, " Urban Design in the Age of Globalization: An Analysis of the Global Reception of Seoul's Cheonggyecheon Stream Restoration Project " 2017: Michael Lee, " North Korean Food Shortages, 1945-1946 " 2016: Joseph Seeley, " Frozen Paths, Fluid Barriers: The Seasonal Geographies of Yalu River Border Security, 1931-1945 " 2015: Benjamin Pham, " How and Why Did South Korea Transition to an Economic Model of Export-led Industrialization? " 2014: Benjamin Lokshin, " Speech Levels in DPRK Society " (pp 124-135) 2013: Hajin Jun, " Render unto Caesar?: Presbyterian Missionaries and the 1935 Shinto Shrine Controversy " (pp 130-138) 2012: Jane Kim, " Globalization of Korean Food " (pp 91-99)

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About the International Affairs Division

The Sungkyun Writing Contest, which began in Beijing in 2007, is held all over Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe. It is aimed at expanding pro-Korean communities that are growing in size abroad with the spread of the Korean wave, while helping the proliferation of the Korean writing system "Hangul", and promoting opportunities for systematic Korean learning.

Contest Locations: China, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Europe Awards and Benefits: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place recipients are provided with a full scholarships at SKKU Eligible Participants: Students who study Korean in China, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, or Europe Contest Format: Essay

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The 2020 Korean Literature Essay Contest

I don’t think we’ve had an essay contest since 2017. It’s good to see it return, organised by UCLan for LTI Korea. The contest is open to readers in the UK.

2020 UCLan IKSU Book Essay Contest The International Institute of Korean Studies (IKSU) at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) is hosting the “2020 Book Essay Contest” in the UK. The contest is held to introduce Korean novels that are translated in English to overseas readers. There will be Awards for five places. Award ceremony is expected to be held in late October 2020. Assessment panel will consist of academics in Korean Studies and professionals in Korean literature. First place (one place): a book voucher, value of £500 Second place (one place): a book voucher, value of £300 Third place (three places): a book voucher, value of £100 each Read one of the three books and send an essay about the book to the email address below. Book to read (choose one): you can find following books at the online bookstores or Amazon. o The Vegetarian: A Novel – by Han Kang (2015) o Autobiography of Death – by Kim Hyesoon (2018) o Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 – by Cho Nam-Joo (2020) Essay: 2,000 words in MS word file (in English). You must include your full name, a short bio, and your email address in your essay. Deadline: 28 August 2020 Where to submit: [email protected] The result will be announced through IKSU website in October 2020, and also the winners will be contacted by email individually. The Book Essay Contest is funded by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea), which is an affiliate organization to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), and the IKSU. The UCLan IKSU Book Essay Contest is open to the public.

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GWIKS Korean Media Essay Contest

The GWIKS Korean Media Essay Contest encourages students to engage with Korean media and promotes a better understanding of Korean culture. 

Video Essay Contest

Deadline: March 8, 2024

More Information on 2023 Contest

Documentary of the Year: “Sa-I-Gu” 

Essay Guidelines for 2022 Contest

April 1, 2022

2021 Book Contest Award Ceremony

Book of the Year: “I Met Loh Kiwan” by Cho Haejin

Essay Guidelines for 2021 Contest Undergrad Division

Essay Guidelines for 2021 Contest High School Division

Book of the Year: “Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982” by Cho Nam-Joo

Poster for 2020 Contest

More Information on 2020 Contest

Essay Guidelines for 2020 Contest

Book of the Year: “ Recitation”  by Bae Suah

Poster for 2019 Contest

More Information about the 2019 Contest

Essay Submission for 2019 Contest

October 25, 2019

2019 Award Ceremony

Photos of 2019 Award Ceremony

Summary of 2019 Award Ceremony

Book of the Year: “I’ll be right there”  by Kyung-Sook Shin

Poster for 2018 Contest

November 16, 2018

2018 Award Ceremony

Photos of 2018 Award Ceremony

Summary of 2018 Award Ceremony

Book of the Year: “The Vegetarian” b y Han Kang

Poster 1 for 2017 Contest

Poster 2 for 2017 Contest

November 10, 2017

2017 Award Ceremony

Photos of 2017 Award Ceremony

Program for 2017 Award Ceremony

Summary of 2017 Award Ceremony

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Spring 2022 korean essay contest.

Spring 2022 Korean Essay Contest This contest is presented by the East Asian Languages and Cultures Department's Korean Language Program and supported by Center for Korean Studies (CKS). Participants will write a critical essay based on the Korean novel "Almond" by Won-pyung Sohn. A digital copy of the English version of the book can be accessed from the UC Berkeley C.V. Starr East Asian Library. The book can also be ordered in either English or Korean from Amazon. The first 100 students to register and request financial support will receive $15 gift cards from Amazon to support the purchase of the book. Recipients of financial support who do not submit essays to the contest will be required to refund the amount. The contest is open to all registered UC Berkeley students. Interested students must  register  for the contest by February 28 and then submit their 1,000 word critical essay in either English or Korean to  [email protected]  no later than March 31, 2022. The winners will be announced on April 15, 2022, and prizes will be awarded to the top 7 entries. The contest guidelines can be reviewed  here . Please direct questions about the contest to Soojin Lee at  [email protected] .  2022 contest  winners:

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Home > national > k-campus.

Sungkyunkwan University hosts annual Korean essay contest

Participants of last year's Sungkyun Hangeul Essay Contest pose for a photo while wearing hanbok (traditional Korean dress). [SUNGKYUNKWAN UNIVERSITY]

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• School Students

8th Korea-India Friendship Essay Competition for School Children [Prizes worth Rs. 1.2L & Trip to South Korea]: Submit by Aug 18

• shivam-chauhan
• May 27, 2020

Korean Cultural Centre of Embassy of the Republic of Korea is organising Essay Writing Competition named “All India 8th Korea-India Friendship Essay Competition 2020” for students of 6th to 12th class. Please note that Korea here means the Republic of Korea also popularly known as South Korea.

About the Essay Competition

The Korea-India Friendship Essay Competition is conducted annually and promotes healthy foreign relations among school students of both countries. The winners are taken for a free tour to the Republic of Korea which lets them explore their culture and heritage and enables a greater understanding of the country, in them.

Eligibility

• Students from Class 6 to 9 will participate in Junior Group
• Students from Class 10 to 12 will participate in Senior Group

Topic of Essay

Junior Group Only (Class 6th to 9th): “How Will I Introduce South Korea To My Friends” (150 to 300 words in English Only)

Senior Group Only (Class 10th to 12th): “How South Korea Inspires Me” (300 to 500 words in English Only)

Senior Group – Class 10 to 12

1st Prize:  Free Trip to South Korea 2nd Prize – a:  Free Trip to South Korea 2nd Prize – b:  Free Trip to South Korea 3rd Prize – a:  Rs 5,000 Cash 3rd Prize – b:  Rs 5,000 Cash 3rd Prize – c:  Rs 5,000 Cash Special Prize (17):  Rs 2,000 Cash

Junior Group – Class 6 to 9

1st prize:  Rs 20,000 Cash 2nd Prize – a:  Rs 10,000 Cash 2nd Prize – b:  Rs 10,000 Cash 3rd Prize – a:  Rs 5,000 Cash 3rd Prize – b:  Rs 5,000 Cash 3rd Prize – c:  Rs 5,000 Cash Special Prize (15):  Rs 1,000 Cash

• The essay must be handwritten or typed in English
• Send paper or via email or via Whatsapp before 12:00 midnight (24:00)on 18 Aug 2020
• The decision of judges will be final & no review request will be entertained
• The contest is open ONLY to Indian Students residing in India
• Travel will be paid to winners for participation in Award Ceremony in Delhi by the shortest route.

How to Submit

• Write an Essay on the topic mentioned below as per Junior / Senior Group

By Email (preferred): [email protected]

By WhatsApp at – 9810026547

By Post : Korean Cultural Centre, 25-A, Ring Road, Lajpat Nagar 4, New Delhi 110024

• Last Date: 18 August 2020 . The Essay must reach us on or before 12:00 midnight (24:00)

Korean Cultural Centre, Embassy of Republic of Korea 25-A, Ring Road, Lajpat Nagar 4, New Delhi – 110024

Email:  [email protected]

Phone: 9810026547

For more information, visit the official site by clicking  here.

You may also be interested in:

Jane Austen Society’s Essay Contest 2020 [Scholarship of Rs. 1.2 Lakhs]: Submit by June 1

Spring Scholarship Essay Contest at Admission Writer [Worth Rs. 1.3L]: Submit by May 31

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past competitions

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int'l sijo competition

wisijo competition

2024 Sijo Competition Rules and Information

Deadline: february 29, 2024 (11:59pm cdt).

how to write sijo | sijo samples | sijo references (links) | sijo lecture videos on YouTube

Divisions : adult division (age 19 and older) and pre-college division (age 18 and younger*)

* College students who are eighteen at the time of the competition deadline are asked to participate in the adult division.

• Write one sijo in English on a topic of your choice. A title for the sijo is not required. *Only one entry per applicant is permitted. More information on writing sijo can be found here.
• Participants must participate in their age-appropriate division. Younger participants may not apply to the adult division.
• Entries must be submitted through our website .
• One entry per category per contestant is permitted. (Contestants are permitted one essay and one sijo entry.)
• All entries must be written in English.
• Contestants' names cannot be written in their entries.
• We reserve the right to use all submitted pieces in future publications of the Sejong Cultural Society with no compensation to the authors.
• We reserve the right to not award any prizes.
• Winners are generally announced by early May . This estimate is subject to change depending on the number of total entries received; a more accurate estimate will be posted on our website soon after the competition deadline.
• Adult division: First ($1,000), Second ($750), Third ($500)
• Pre-college division: First ($500), Second ($400), Third ($300)
• Honorable mention (for both divisions listed above): Friends of Pacific Rim Awards ($50 each)
• Competition winners may be announced in AZALEA: Journal of Korean Literature and Culture , published by the Korea Institute at Harvard University.
• Winners' works may be published in the Korea Times Chicago or the Korean Quarterly or Azalea : A Journal of Korean Literature and Culture, published by the Korea Institute at Harvard University.

© Copyright the Sejong Cultural Society . All rights reserved.

How feeling envy helped me in life — mostly

As a child in south korea, i thought the emotion was a ‘sin.’ but as a life coach, i’ve seen it used as an instrument for good..

Stuck in a male-dominated Korean culture, I grew up with envy. My earliest memory was waking up in my family’s Chicago apartment to find the living room jampacked with blue baby shower presents. Not only was I not invited to the party, but my unborn brother gained more possessions in one evening than I owned in the first six years of my life before he arrived.

Four years later, when I was 10, we moved to Seoul. There, at school, my biggest lesson was adjusting to a culture where, as a girl, I felt I had no status. This was during the late 1970s and the idea of virtuous women, or y eolnyeo, who first served fathers, husbands and then sons, was pretty firmly in place. I knew it was unjust, but mostly I was envious of boys, especially my brother, Roger, who had unseated me as the favored child. If that wasn’t enough, my father was a professor of Christian ethics and a minister, and so I knew envy was a vice. On top of everything else, I was a sinner, too.

Yet jealousy helped me thrive in my career, marriage and parenting. And as a certified life coach in New York for the last 15 years, I’ve helped many clients turn the destructive side of envy into an instrument for good, as a motivator to persist even when life feels unfair.

Envy gets a bad rap. When I bring it up in casual conversations outside of work, most friends deny experiencing the emotion, even if they just badmouthed a mutual acquaintance with some undeserved good fortune. In Korea, status comparisons are openly discussed. You see threads of both admiration and disdain for the elite in every K-drama or film — from the 2019-2020 television series “ Crash Landing on You” to the 2020 Oscar-winning movie “ Parasite .”

I wondered whether my background made me preoccupied with what seemed to be the last taboo: In the United States, we openly discuss politics, sex and religion, yet feelings of envy remain unexplored.

“How you experience envy correlates to how you respond to competition,” said Princeton University psychology professor Susan Fiske, author of the book “Envy Up, Scorn Down: How Status Divides Us.” “If somebody is a little above you, and they’re your ally or mentor, then benign envy is when you say, ‘You have something I want, I’m going to learn how you’re doing it and imitate you.’ If the person is too far above you, like the Queen of England, then forget it. ... But, if they’re just a bit above you, and you think you deserve it and they don’t, that’s toxic envy.”

“Envy is about status. Jealousy is a threat to a valued primary relationship,” says psychologist Robert Leahy, director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy. In his therapy practice, “it’s pervasive. People avoid other people. Friendships and family relationships are affected. Generally, it’s people who are aspirational, during their 20s through 40s, trying to advance.”

This helps explain why so many of my high-achieving clients ruminated about close colleagues who worked faster or received more interesting assignments. But they rarely mentioned heads of their organizations or competitors outside their organization.

I was a classic case. Growing up, my father groomed my baby brother to become a doctor while expecting little of me. My mother scolded me in childhood for not finishing the crusts of my sandwiches while dutifully chopping them off upon Roger’s request. I loved them and ached for them to adore me as they did him.

It didn’t help that I was not alone. Middle school girls back then were taught how to iron a man’s shirt and use an abacus to manage household expenses. Meanwhile, boys seem to mostly get away with snapping back our bra straps and flicking up the edge of our skirts. To this day, I can’t sit in a dress without making sure I sit on its bottom edges.

I was also ashamed of resenting my sibling. He was my sole comrade in the upheaving move from the United States to Korea and for the six years we lived there, until at 16 I went to live with my aunt in Los Angeles.

New York Episcopal Bishop Allen Shin, who is Korean American, reassured me that merely having a negative feeling was not a sin. “It’s natural. We can’t control it. How you use it, express it, and act upon it ... that’s what matters.”

He also agreed that growing up in a traditional Korean family likely made me more susceptible. “Korean culture is such a rigid, patriarchal, Confucian culture. The girl must sacrifice for the boys. So yes, a daughter feels envious of her brother. It can be suffocating, needing to do to honor for the family while suppressing individuality.”

“Rather than deny your envy, you have to acknowledge and accept how you feel,” adding that both the Buddhist tradition of mindful contemplation and the Christian tradition of spiritual detachment can be helpful.

Without such awareness, however, my juvenile fantasy of winning back my parents’ affection turned into a great motivator in my life. To prove I was worthy, I pushed myself to graduate school. I struggled until one day I realized that if I didn’t finish my dissertation soon, my brother could become a “doctor” before me. I earned my PhD in education policy and leadership a month before he got his MD — only to discover my parents’ views did not change. And, despite landing a coveted postdoc position at Columbia University, I was miserable. Climbing the academic ladder required publishing journal articles I didn’t enjoy reading, let alone writing.

I finally came to realize that “if you consider people struggling with status — trying to gain it, keep it, undermine others from having it, there’s no end,” as Leahy put it.

He recommends searching for meaning and devised the “negation technique”: “Imagine you’ve lost everything, your body, memories, possessions, and family. Then, add back one thing at a time, but only if you can prove you appreciate it.”

Knowing this technique could have saved me years of struggle. Envy motivated me to get technical skills, an advanced degree and a good job, providing me with public success. But to make my life fulfilling, I needed to look beyond outward status markers and dig inward. I need to figure out what I truly wanted. Envy, oddly, helped me again, but it did even more.

While I loved being the primary caregiver for my children, it irked me that mothers tended to struggle with their careers in a way that many fathers did not. I was also envious of entrepreneurs and writers. Watching them — and, yes, I suppose envying them — made me decide to start my own life coach practice, helping women figure out how to balance careers and family, and taking writing classes whenever I could.

As Fiske describes in her book, envy is also “a moral emotion” and often “entails feelings of injustice.” For me, that meant a path to a profession that aimed to rectify the unfairness similar to what I had experienced or witnessed. In doing so, I gained a sense of purpose, doing work that deeply mattered to me, guiding young ambitious women to navigate some of the shoals I had.

Harnessing the power of envy was a tool I shared — figuring out how to use it as both compass and engine to a desired career or life, without it becoming toxic. Clients learned to emulate, seek advice and sometimes even collaborate with those they once envied to find something more rewarding

Twenty-three years since we got our degrees, my brother and I are closer. We have commiserated about the burdens of cultural expectations on each of us. He sees the weight of elder care responsibilities on me (including caregivers now who save all their questions and needs for my visits) and I the pressures to advance on him. These days we take turns traveling back to Seoul to care for our frail father and our mother with late-stage Alzheimer’s.

On one of those recent trips, while tidying my parents’ cluttered apartment, I discovered copies of recent essays I’d written tucked in my father’s desk. I found notebooks in which my mother had copied and translated into Korean sections of articles I had written how I had once despised Korea for its stifling sexism. Reading those translations in the margins, I suspected my words resonated with her, too, even as her memory and handwriting faltered.

And I wondered if coming to terms with my own feelings of envy, and then using them to finally get to a place that was important to me, had helped them finally see me, too.

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