The late Seok Keum-ho, head of type foundry Sandoll, will be posthumously awarded the Silver Crown Order of Cultural Merit for his contributions to developing and distributing Hangul typefaces. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said on the 6th that it had selected eight individuals and two organizations for the 2026 Hangul Development Merit awards, recognizing their work advancing Hangul and the Korean language. The awards will be presented at the 580th Hangul Day ceremony at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in Seoul's Jongno District on the 9th.
This year's recipients have created a wide range of Hangul fonts used in everyday life, studied the design principles of Hunminjeongeum, the original treatise on the Korean alphabet, and built places around the world where Korean is taught and learned. The ministry will confer one Silver Crown Order of Cultural Merit, one Jade Crown Order of Cultural Merit, two Cultural Medals, three Presidential Commendations and three Prime Minister's Commendations.
According to the ministry, Seok founded the font company Sandoll to independently develop and distribute Hangul typefaces and is credited with creating and releasing some 1,000 Hangul fonts over more than 40 years. His work laid the groundwork for expressing Hangul in diverse ways in computing environments and helped raise the cultural and artistic value of the alphabet.
The Jade Crown Order of Cultural Merit goes to Paik Tae-hyun, vice president of the Korean university network in Central Asia. Paik has devoted himself to Korean-language education and research on ethnic Koreans in Central Asia. He led the establishment of two Korean universities in Kyrgyzstan, expanded educational infrastructure through programs including a government initiative to support leading universities in international cooperation, and worked to train a new generation of Korean studies specialists.
The Cultural Medals go to Cho Soo-jin, president of the Mid-Eastern Regional Conference of the National Association for Korean Schools in the United States, who developed Korean-language curricula for students of Korean descent in the U.S. and strengthened the foundation for Hangul education, and to Choi Hong-sik, president of the King Sejong Memorial Society, who broadened scholarly understanding of Hangul through his book on the phonetics of Hunminjeongeum and interdisciplinary research on the alphabet's design principles.
Presidential Commendations will be awarded to Professor Lee Young-joon of Hirosaki University in Japan, the Tashkent Weekend Hangul School in Uzbekistan, and the Korea Institute at the Australian National University. Prime Minister's Commendations will go to Kim Kyung-seok, president of the Korea Speech and Oratory Association; Laura Tamosiuniene, associate professor at Mykolas Romeris University in Lithuania; and Ji Seo-won, associate professor at the National University of Singapore.
"The ministry will continue to support education and exchange programs that nurture the value of Hangul and connect people who want to learn Korean," the ministry said.
