Employees from five Hanjin Group airlines, including Korean Air, take part in the "Better Tomorrow Studio" voice talent donation campaign at Korean Air's headquarters in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, on Friday. [Korean Air]
Employees from five Hanjin Group airlines, including Korean Air, take part in the "Better Tomorrow Studio" voice talent donation campaign at Korean Air's headquarters in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, on Friday. [Korean Air]

Airline employees from Hanjin Group — voices familiar to passengers from in-flight announcements — have put their vocal talents to work reading children's fairy tales, producing audiobooks for children with limited access to books, including those with visual impairments and children from multicultural families.

Korean Air announced Monday that it held the "Better Tomorrow Studio" voice talent donation campaign at its headquarters in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, on Friday, with employees from five Hanjin Group airlines taking part.

About 20 employees from Korean Air, Asiana Airlines, Jin Air, Air Busan and Air Seoul participated in the campaign. Last year, Korean Air and Asiana Airlines jointly carried out a social contribution activity; this year, the initiative expanded to include employees from low-cost carriers within the Hanjin Group.

Joint activities among Hanjin Group affiliates have been growing ahead of the planned launch of a merged airline. Social contribution efforts that connect the experiences of customer-facing employees with community outreach have also been on the rise.

The campaign centered on producing fairy-tale audiobooks using the employees' voices. Participants received training from a professional voice actor, ran through rehearsals, and then recorded their assigned portions of the stories.

Volunteers included in-flight announcement training instructors, cabin crew members with experience as announcers or reporters, and general staff. Employees who could deliver content naturally in English were also selected for the English-language recordings.

A total of eight titles were produced — six Korean-language fairy tales and two in English. The books were chosen with the airlines' character in mind, selecting stories that allow children to experience travel and different cultures vicariously. English audiobooks were added this year for the first time to support language learning.

The finished audiobooks will be loaded onto reading-assist devices. Korean Air plans to bundle each audiobook with 400 copies of the corresponding printed fairy tale — 50 sets in total — and distribute them to children with limited access to reading materials.

Recipients include children with visual impairments and those from multicultural households who face difficulty reading or obtaining books. The aim is to ensure that children who struggle to read on their own, or who cannot easily access books without a caregiver's help, can still encounter stories through sound.

"Knowing that the voice I use for in-flight announcements will reach children through these audiobooks made me read each passage with even more care," a Korean Air cabin crew member who took part in the campaign said. "I hope the children who have had difficulty accessing books will discover a whole new world by listening to the audiobooks we made."

Korean Air has been continuing joint social contribution activities with Asiana Airlines and other Hanjin Group carriers ahead of their planned merger later this year. The group said it intends to broaden its community engagement and sustain outreach programs that draw on the skills its airline employees possess.


kwater@heraldcorp.com