Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Former teacher writes books aimed at children
By Bahk Eun-ji
Han Se-kyung is a children's book writer who started her literary career in 2003 when she was teaching at an elementary school.
After working as a teacher for 31 years, Han retired in February 2019 to write books and opened a one-woman publishing house, Story-I.
Han Se-kyung /Yonhap
By Bahk Eun-ji
Recently, she finally published a book aimed at young children, “Imaginary Mom, Please Buy This” and a short story aimed at middle school students, “Operation Little One Returns!”
The book, “Imaginary Mom, Please Buy This” is said to be short but touching, teaching children how to take care of one's belongings through the “secondhand mom,” a main character in the story.
“Three of my children's books have been released since I debuted. It took nine years since I authored a short story in 2011,” Han was quoted as saying by Yonhap.
Han said she could not completely concentrate on writing when she was a teacher, because she wanted to put her all efforts into helping her students.
“But thanks to my life as a teacher for such a long time, I think I learned how to be in their shoes, and got to know what they really wanted to do,” she said.
Han decided to set up the one-person publishing company to overcome chronic problems in the industry.
Many writers like her have a difficult time finding opportunities to publish their stories even after making a successful debut through winning a literary contest hosted by a newspaper or publishing company.
“If you win a contest hosted by a large publishing company, you will be placed in the ranks of popular writers and orders will be placed. Professional authors and aspiring writers who are dreaming of starting their career are usually obsessed with such contests, but it is not easy to meet the standards of judges.”
Han said she has been working on publishing her fourth and fifth fairy tale books this year.
In June next year, she also plans to prepare lectures for those who want to write children's books, and she wants to set up a book cafe where parents of elementary school children can share their thoughts and experiences of raising kids.
“Children's stories show you the world from a child's point of view,” she said. “I believe that only when parents can see the world through their children's eyes can they raise their children properly,” she said.