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Lee Bock-hee has played a role as an honorary goodwill ambassador of The Korea Times unwittingly for the past decade.
Lee, vice president of the non-profit group Seoul International Women's Association (SIWA), was once a "need-driven" reader of the newspaper in 1982 when she entered college. Like other college students of her time, she read it to improve her English.
Her purpose, however, has changed since 2012 when she assumed the chair of SIWA's Charity Committee responsible for the annual bazaar to raise money to help those in need.
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| Lee Bock-hee, vice chairperson of Seoul International Women's Association / Courtesy of Lee Bock-hee |
To work closely with other SIWA members who are from Korea and around the world, she had to know what was going on not only in the nation but also in the foreign community.
Lee became an avid Korea Times reader reading the paper for news, rather than for English.
"The Korea Times has long been part of my daily routine," Lee said during a recent phone interview. "Back in 2012, I looked into SIWA archives to learn more about the organization and found many clipped articles that were published in The Korea Times… My life has been inseparable from the newspaper since."
SIWA is a Seoul-based international women's group. It was founded in 1962 as a meeting place between local and international women in Korea to work for common causes, including social awareness programs and poverty reduction.
Many non-Korean members of SIWA are the wives of diplomats or international business representatives living in Korea for a time. Due to this characteristic, SIWA's foreign members are frequently changing.
As a longtime member, one of Lee's roles at SIWA is informing new non-Korean members about the organization and helping them understand what to expect from their memberships.
"I send them the link of the Korea Times article about SIWA's history and its founding members and why they created such a rare community here," Lee said.
She said the role of The Korea Times will be greater in the near future with the rapid growth of the non-Korean population here. "Many SIWA members have school-age children. They attend primary or secondary schools and many of them don't speak Korean. If The Korea Times covers in-depth stories about Korea and Korean culture, I think this will definitely help them understand the country better," she said.
