In South Korea, Poetry's Everywhere

Jimin Kang contributes an article to Atlas Obscura about poetry's presence in South Korea's public spaces. "Poems appear in places one least expects: hostel rooms and the windows of restaurants; rest stops on nature walks and amusement-park walkways; urban billboards and even on platform screen doors in the Seoul subway," Kang reports. Further in: 

“Most Koreans these days are busy people,” says Ham Young-Woo, who works in the Arts & Culture bureau of the Seoul Metropolitan Government. He currently leads a team that, since 2008, has displayed thousands of amateur and professional poems on subway screen doors in over 300 [metro] stations. “We wanted to find a way to integrate poetry into their day-to-day lives. Otherwise, I doubt most people would go out of their way to read poetry.”

For centuries, poetry has played an important role in Korean society. In ancient times, the yangban, or Korean nobility, wrote poems not only as part of government examinations, but also to express coded commentaries on their social and political views. (Prospective civil servants still sit for a national exam, but poetry is no longer on the test.) During the 20th-century Japanese occupation of Korea, poets wielded their pens to criticize Japanese imperialism and reclaim their Korean identity as the national culture, language, and history were nearly wiped out.

Learn more at Atlas Obscura.