Text drawn from poet Lee Moon-jae's 'Shangri-La'

The fall edition of the Gwanghwamun Geulpan is produced each year using the winning design from a university student competition. [Kyobo Life]
The fall edition of the Gwanghwamun Geulpan is produced each year using the winning design from a university student competition. [Kyobo Life]

"Every place unvisited is the future."

Kyobo Life announced Monday that it has unveiled the fall edition of its Gwanghwamun Geulpan, a large outdoor literary board, featuring a line drawn from poet Lee Moon-jae's work "Shangri-La."

The company said the text "conveys a message to keep challenging ourselves toward the future without giving up, even when there are things we have yet to accomplish," adding that it "carries hope for a future full of boundless possibility."

Lee began his literary career in 1982 when he published poems in the poetry collective journal "Si Undong" (Poetry Movement). He has since released several collections, including "When I Take Off My Wet Shoes to Show the Sun," "Walking Poems" and "The Remote Reaches of the Heart."

He received the sixth Kim Dal-jin Literary Award in 1995 for his poem "Tower Crane and Four Other Poems," the 17th Sowol Poetry Literary Award in 2002 for "Earth's Autumn," and the seventh Nojak Literary Award in 2007 for his collection "Water's Cross-Legged Sitting."

The fall edition of the Gwanghwamun Geulpan is also produced each year using the top prize-winning entry from a university student design competition. The 2026 contest, held throughout July, drew 816 submissions, with seven works selected for awards including the grand prize, excellence prize and encouragement prizes.

Kyobo Life selected Jeong Ho-yun, a design innovation major at Sejong University, as the grand prize winner after a judging panel of university professors and professional designers reviewed the entries.

Jeong said the design was intended "to look at the infinite possibilities of the future with the same pure eyes as when we were children, writing down our dreams and imagining what lay ahead." He added that he "expressed the undrawn future as a blank sketchbook, and sought to show boundless possibility through children freely drawing their own dreams."

The Kyobo Life Gwanghwamun Geulpan is a large literary display board mounted on the exterior of Kyobo Life's headquarters in Jongno-gu, Seoul. First introduced in 1991, it has been in operation for 36 years, refreshing its text and design each spring, summer, fall and winter.

The fall edition will hang at the Gwanghwamun Kyobo Life Building, Gangnam Kyobo Tower and the Jeju office through late November — about three months. It can also be viewed on the Kyobo Life newsroom website.


kimstar@heraldcorp.com