The Sejong City Culture and Tourism Foundation (CEO Park Young-guk) will present the media art piece "Night Where Words Shine" at "Seoul Light DDP 2026 Autumn," held at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) from September 3 to 13. This work was produced as part of the "2026 Hangeul Cultural Products and Contents Development Support Project," hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the National Hangeul Museum, and organized by the Sejong City Culture and Tourism Foundation. It will be screened daily from 7:30 PM to 10:30 PM at the DDP Oulim Square.

"Night Where Words Shine" is a media art piece that reinterprets Cheonggu Yeongeon (1728, compiled by Kim Cheon-taek, a National Treasure), a collection of Hangeul lyrics housed in the National Hangeul Museum, through light and sound. Songs from 300 years ago are set to meet today's urban landscape, unfolding anew across the exterior walls of DDP.

The Hangeul Lyrics of Cheonggu Yeongeon Resonate in the City

Cheonggu Yeongeon is the oldest extant collection of sijo (traditional Korean three-line poems), containing 580 Hangeul lyrics, making it evaluated as the origin of our traditional lyrics. The media art creative group "Two Gray" reinterpreted these lyrics into a large-scale media art piece filling the exterior wall of DDP.

The work weaves the emotions and natural scenery contained in the lyrics into three parts based on the sijo structure: the first line (chojang), the second line (jungjang), and the final line (jongjang). "May Today Be Like Today," which appears in the first part, is the opening lyric of Cheonggu Yeongeon. It captures the moment when songs, which used to scatter into thin air after being sung once, were finally recorded through Hangeul. Hundreds of mouth shapes and grids inspired by the square form of Hangeul fill the screen, unfolding a scene where letters seem to produce sound.

The second part, "Melody of Mountains and Waters," reinterpreting the natural scenery embedded in Hangeul sijo. The grids that formed the characters are disassembled into pixels, reminiscent of a digitally realized traditional landscape painting, intersected with the tactile texture unique to traditional crafts crafted by hand.

The third part, "Sea of Resonance," leaves a deep lingering impression as the light repeatedly swells and shrinks like a heartbeat before expanding into a massive wave that sweeps across the entire wall. In short, the lyrics contained in Cheonggu Yeongeon from 300 years ago unfold in twists and turns through urban light.

Hangeul: Beyond the Function of Letters to Core Content of the Cultural Industry

The "2026 Hangeul Cultural Products and Contents Development Support Project," in which the Hangeul Culture City Center of the Sejong City Culture and Tourism Foundation participates as a subsidiary project operator, is promoted to develop and globally publicize products and contents containing the cultural value of Hangeul, commemorating the 100th anniversary of Hangeul Day (Gagayan Day), the 580th anniversary of the promulgation of Hunminjeongeum, and the 100th anniversary of the promulgation of Hunminjeongeum for the blind (Hunmaengjeongeum).

In June of this year, it garnered enthusiastic responses from visitors at the stationery fair Inventario with an experience capturing stationery and writing preferences into Hangeul sentences (mungu). In August, at the exhibition booth of "KCON LA 2026" held in Los Angeles, USA, it introduced the value of Hangeul and Cheonggu Yeongeon as the origin of our lyrics, while unveiling the K-POP music video "A Piece of My Heart" created based on it. In October, which features Hangeul Day, it plans to consecutively present Hangeul cultural products and contents through the Hangeul Culture Industry Exhibition in Gwanghwamun and a pop-up exhibition in Seongsu-dong.

Park Young-guk, CEO of the Sejong City Culture and Tourism Foundation, stated, "Cheonggu Yeongeon is a precious record that conveys the cultural value of our language and songs up to the present day," adding, "Through this media art, we aimed to present how the Hangeul lyrics from 300 years ago are newly reinterpreted through contemporary sensibilities." He continued, "We will continue to discover cultural contents that connect tradition and modernity, and regions and the world, through Hangeul, thereby expanding the identity of Sejong as a Hangeul culture city."

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