Incheon Metropolitan City will participate at Korea Market Focus Pavilion at the 43rd London Book Fair. Incheon will be the only Korean city that exhibits in the pavilion. In particular, it will promote Incheon as World Book Capital 2015 named by UNESCO, targeting visitors from all around the world. They have prepared diverse promotional events for that aim.
Mayor of Incheon Metropolitan City, Young-Gil Song says, "Our participation in this year's London Book Fair is to promote UNESCO World Book Capital 2015 as well as 'Reading Incheon' in the rest of the world. Our city will spare no efforts to turn itself into an educational and cultural city by sharing culture through books and narrowing cultural gaps through latest technologies, which echoes UNESCO's ideology."
Ultimately, WBCC2015 Incheon will promote Korean citizens' cultural development and awareness, and connect with North Korea providing a foundation for the re-unification of the South with the North. Also, it will be a central city of international cultural exchange via books, and will continuously contribute to the global community even after this event.
WBCC will reduce the geographical and the generation gaps and will become a successful model to illustrate international exchanges across international borders and different ideologies. It will also demonstrate how a city's industrial and technological infrastructure can contribute to society.
Incheon also has some people who are isolated from cultural access and information as some people live on islands far away from the mainland, or due to other environmental reasons. Hence, the city has been managing a various number of cultural businesses such as the mobile library, which visits each island, and the 'Reading Incheon' mobile application, which enables the 2.9 million citizens of Incheon to get access to an online library via their mobile telephone.
Incheon is a meeting place for Korea and the rest of the world via the Incheon port and Incheon International Airport. The newly built MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences & exhibitions) infrastructure makes Incheon even an appropriate venue as a stage of global festival. It is also a geographically strategic place to have a cultural exchange with North Korea that is becoming more and more isolated from the rest of the world.
The London Book Fair (LBF) is the global marketplace for rights negotiation and the sale and distribution of content across print, audio, TV, film and digital channels. LBF brings direct access to customers, content and emerging markets. Korea is Market Focus country in 2014, following Turkey in 2013. Korea is one of the top ten publishing markets in the world.
