Reading a Book Underground

If you ride the subway in Seoul, you’ll notice that it’s most of the times very quiet. It’s rather seldom that you hear somebody talk or noisy bigger groups of people. Most subway riders look at their smartphone spending their time productive, playing games or relaxing to music and videos. Although it’s so quiet and a good environment to concentrate, you won’t see a lot of people with a book.  However, in the last months there’s a small renaissance of reading in general and especially in public transport. Through this post, I want to show how Korea jumps on the train of reading books in subways.

First, let’s take a look at a case in the USA: The Maimi AD Schol had this great idea to offer free previews of certain books to subway users. They just have to scan the cover with their smartphone and then after reading it, they get information about public libraries. There, they can rent the books and hopefully, they are going to spent the next subway ride with reading a book. Here’s a video of their idea, titled as “The Underground Library”:

Reading Books in Seoul Subway

Let’s get back to Korea and look how books are promoted in public transport. You can see more and more book-corners appearing in subway stations. There are even possibilities to get a book for free at bus stations:

Concerning subways, for example at Daehwa Station (Line no. 3) you can find a book-corner, where you can sit down, read your own book or choose one out of the displayed books.

That’s not all what’s going on in Korea nowadays: There is a whole movement which holds regular meetings and takes in a “flash-mob manner” the subway together with the purpose to read books and spread the idea:

This video is from Jan 19th and you can see that a lot of people participated. The idea behind reading books in Seoul Subway is that other people see how much fun it makes to read a book while using public transport.

The next event is going to be on this Saturday (March 23rd) from 10 am to 3 pm. They meet at the Catholic Youth Center in Hongdae (Hongik Station Line no. 2, exit no. 2, “Nicolas-Hall” on the fifth floor of the Youth Center building). If you want to participate, they recommend to apply beforehand for the event online (unfortunately only in Korean). On Saturday, you just have to bring a book, meet at the Youth Center and after a short introduction, you’ll go to take subway line no. 2 with everybody else.

Resources and related Links: Mashable about NYC Subway | BookMetro Facebook Page