On April 4, movie director and screenwriter Dae-woo Kim encouraged the practice of reading at the Readers Concert held in the Visual Auditory Room of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. The Readers Concert, an intended pun that alludes to the “Leaders Concert,” portrays reading as the secret to success and reemphasizes the role of reading in today’s society.

Kim, best known for his 2006 film Forbidden Quest and last year’s The Servant, described himself as a “manic fan” of newspapers. While studying in Italy, Kim eagerly anticipated packages from home not for the objects inside but for the newspaper that was used as wrapping paper.

As a child, Kim was not a prolific reader. Instead, he only read a small number of books repeatedly to the point where he mastered them. For instance, Kim claims to have read Robinson Crusoe over five hundred times and still reads it to this day.

Kim sees in hindsight that it was the time he spent falling in love with reading that shaped him as an individual. He has read one book a day since turning 30 and describes the act of reading as his “pinnacle of pleasure.” “Rather than the actual contents of the book, the act of reading itself is what nourished me as a child,” said Kim in his speech.

On the controversy over online, or electronic, books, Kim remains ambivalent. “Whether they are electronic books or paper books, the importance is that you do read,” he said. “The method of reading is merely your life’s scent.”

In the movie The Servant, which attracted over three million viewers to cinemas nationwide and topped the box office charts, Kim brilliantly reinterprets a classic Korean romance novel Chunhyang-jeon. Kim’s latest work is the short film “Age of Milk”, filmed entirely with a Samsung Galaxy S smartphone. “Age of Milk” is available on video-sharing websites such as YouTube.

Sponsored by Korea Press Foundation and Chosun Ilbo, the Readers Concert invited Kyung-chul Park, Kyung-duk Suh, Dae-woo Kim and Nan-do Kim for special lectures. The four men each spoke at Sogang University, Seoul National University, KAIST and Ewha Womans University respectively from March 31 to April 6.