On September 20, the ‘2026 Love Your Roots World Korean-Chinese Folk Culture and Arts Festival’ (Ppuri Sarang Segye Joseonjok Mingan Munhwa Yesul Chukje) and the launch celebration for the cultural magazine 《Daelim Culture》 (Daelim Munhwa) drew to a triumphant close in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province. Weaving together literature and song, dance and traditional arts, the day brought Korean-Chinese (Joseonjok) compatriots from every corner of the world into one place under the banner of culture—a meaningful occasion to affirm one another’s lives and roots, and to pass that inheritance on to the next generation.
Yet behind the dazzling stage and the applause of the crowd lies something that deserves to be remembered far longer: the effort and devotion of those who, unseen and over many long months, labored to bring a single book—《Daelim Culture》—into the world.
 [코리안투데이] (사진) Cover of the inaugural issue of 《Daelim Culture》 © 박수진 기자 |
A book does not come into being simply by gathering manuscripts and sending them to the printer. Someone must wrestle with the direction the book should take; someone must set their own life and memories down in words. Scattered manuscripts and materials must be collected, read and reread, polished countless times, and finally bound into a single volume. From planning and writing, through the gathering and selection of manuscripts, to editing and proofreading, design and production, innumerable hands must be added before a book can at last be placed before its readers.
《Daelim Culture》 was made in just this way. And the significance of this publication does not end with the birth of one more literary magazine. Within its pages are the stories of compatriots who left their hometowns to build new lives on unfamiliar ground—memories of family, of home, of migration and settlement. Beyond the poems, essays, and stories written by those who love literature, its meaning lies in the fact that the footprints of the culture and art the diaspora community has created together have now been set down as a record.
 [코리안투데이] (사진) Inaugural issue of 《Daelim Culture》 © 박수진 기자 |
Words fade with time, and when the curtain falls on a performance, the moment passes—but a record remains. That is why the labor of the writers, editors, and staff who penned manuscripts, gathered materials, and strove to raise the quality of 《Daelim Culture》 is all the more precious. Their toil was not merely the making of a book; it was the act of committing to the record a part of the life, culture, and memory of the diaspora community.
This publication is also noteworthy in that the community has recorded its own story with its own hands. The lives of migrants are all too easily left to be documented through the gaze of society or the records of outsiders. 《Daelim Culture》, however, holds a special value: here, compatriots wrote their own lives and memories in their own language, and bound them together into a single cultural record.
 [코리안투데이] (사진) Awards ceremony at the publication celebration © 박수진 기자 |
This significance was underscored again and again in the congratulatory addresses delivered at the event. Kim Ji-gyeon, Chairman of the China-Korea Compatriots Friendship Association, expressed his hope that 《Daelim Culture》 would become a shared memory gathering the scattered stories of many lives, and a record conveying the depth of their roots to the generations to come.
Bucheon Mayor Cho Yong-ik, in his address, conveyed the message that roots do not merely dwell in the memories of the past but are the strength that sustains today’s life and opens the way to tomorrow, and he expressed his wish that 《Daelim Culture》 would serve as a bridge carrying the precious language, culture, and arts of the Korean-Chinese community to the next generation.
 [코리안투데이] (사진) Stage greeting at the publication celebration © 박수진 기자 |
Kim Gwang-rim, Chairman of the All-Japan Federation of Chinese Korean-Chinese, and Kim Mi-jeong, President-General of the Central Federation of Chinese Compatriots, likewise stressed, respectively, the importance of language and culture in connecting compatriots living across many regions of the world, and the need for records that carry cultural values across generations and borders.
A program of cultural performances followed in celebration of the launch. In particular, the Songhwagang Senior Arts Troupe presented the dance ‘Bae Ttiwora’ (‘Set the Boat Afloat’) as a congratulatory performance, sharing in the joy of the publication. The graceful movements of the troupe members, dressed in elegant hanbok, blended with the cultural fruit of the book’s launch to leave a deep impression on the audience gathered at the venue.
The event’s success was owed not only to those who stepped onto the stage, but to the many who, each in their own place, lent their strength to preparing the event and making the book. The person who looked back over their past life to write a single manuscript; the person who gathered scattered materials; the person who polished sentences and checked for typographical errors; the people who built the book’s structure and stayed at their posts until publication was complete—their hours, gathered together, became the finished work that is 《Daelim Culture》.
 [코리안투데이] (사진) Congratulatory performance ‘Let the Boat Sail’ by the Songhwagang Senior Arts Troupe © 박수진 기자 |
Their names and roles may differ, but their resolve was one: to preserve the culture and memory of the diaspora community through a single book.
That this is the inaugural issue makes its significance greater still. A first book does not follow a path already laid; it is the work of making a path where none existed. What to include, which voices to record, and what role the book should play in the years ahead—all of this must be decided from the very beginning. In that sense, the labor of those who joined forces to launch 《Daelim Culture》 carries the meaning of having laid the first foundation for the records that will follow.
 [코리안투데이] (사진) Poetry reading at the celebratory stage program © 박수진 기자 |
If the ‘2026 Love Your Roots World Korean-Chinese Folk Culture and Arts Festival,’ now successfully concluded, was a cultural gathering place where people met one another, then 《Daelim Culture》 may be called a place of record that will carry that spirit beyond time. The festival has ended, but the book remains.
And what remains within that book is not only the works themselves. Alongside the hearts that remember their hometowns, the years spent building lives in a foreign land, and the will of those who sought to preserve their culture and pass it on to the next generation, there is also recorded the time and devotion of those who worked quietly to bring a single book into the world.
 [코리안투데이] (사진) Commemorative group photo of event participants © 박수진 기자 |
Herein lies the deeper reason the publication of 《Daelim Culture》 is so meaningful. Attention now turns to whether this inaugural issue will be not a single act of publishing but the beginning of a sustained cultural movement, in which Korean-Chinese compatriots around the world record their own lives, culture, and history and pass them on to those who come after.
One person’s memory becomes a story; memory recorded together becomes history. The inaugural issue of 《Daelim Culture》 has opened that first page.
<저작권자 ⓒ 코리안투데이(The Korean Today) 무단전재 및 재배포 금지>
