Mr Park Chul Won began his talk with a question: what are the countries whose population is the happiest in the world?

He said: among 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the countries of highest happiness index are in Northwest Eupore such as Norway, Finland, Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden. Next are the rest of Europe, the US and Canada. However, there are economically developed countries that are not in the list of happy nations. Thus the happy nations are not only economically developed but are supposed to create a prosperous cultural life for their population.

Mr Park Chul Won also revealed the implications faced by developed nations for focusing merely on economic development while ignoring cultural aspects such as materialistic lifestyle, the rich-poor inequality, social evils, crime and educational degradation.

So why is reading important? Why should reading be part of a child’s development?

The reading campaign of Hanuri introduced to the audiences the “5 in 1” approach. It is an integrated process including listening-speaking-reading-writing, and then thinking, discussion, giving feedback and conclusions. This process helpes create integrated creative thinking for children. Those that frequently read books and master their skills would develop their integrated creative thinking.

The 21st century is a century of mankind. The history of mankind’s civilization is a history of knowledge and creative thinking. The focus and foundation for the development of knowledge and creative thinking is reading. Taking reading as the basis, then developing other knowledge systems is always the responsibility of educators. Each nation has to recognize the importance of the culture of reading, encourage and boost the reading movement among its population, especially among children and adolescents.

Mr Park Chul Won said Vietnam and Korea had become important partners in economic and cultural exchanges. In particular, cultural and educational exchanges would be part of the “soft” power to foster friendly relations and understanding between the two people. Books and reading are no doubt important to improving bilateral relations. He hoped to have more chances to share with Vietnamese youth his experiences in reading, developing and spreading the reading movement to contribute to the development of Vietnam and Vietnam-South Korea bilateral relations.