Rural-movement leader and library campaigner who spread village libraries (pen name Gansong; Ramon Magsaysay Award)
| Life | 1921 ~ 2009 |
| Era | 현대 |
| Clan | 영월 엄씨 |
Eom Dae-seop (1921-2009) was a rural-movement leader and book collector known for the village library and library-building movement, with pen name Gansong (澗松). His Wikipedia article does not state a seat and the category "Yeongwol Eom" is followed here. He was born into a poor tenant-farming family in Ulju, South Gyeongsang, and died in Los Angeles on 5 February 2009 aged 89.
He is said to have opened a private free library in Ulsan in 1951 (1954 in the biographical summary) and served as secretary-general of the Korean Library Association in 1955. In 1961 he founded the Village Library Promotion Association, starting a movement of small village reading rooms that was later absorbed into the Saemaul Movement organization. He organized the Korea Library Research Society and led the abolition of public library entrance fees, and was active in the book-sending campaign for farming and fishing villages, mobile libraries (1983), open-shelf public libraries and publishing the magazine Today's Library (1984-1987).
He received the Oesol Prize in 1973, the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 1980 and the Silver Crown Order of Cultural Merit in 2004. The article presents him as a library campaigner and a central figure in the village library movement. Where years differ by source, both are shown because the text itself is inconsistent.
The village library movement placed small reading rooms in farming and fishing villages where books were hard to buy, and was later absorbed into the Saemaul Movement organization. He is introduced as a library campaigner who sought to make lending of books a social institution.
His seat follows the Wikipedia category, and his branch and lineage could not be confirmed. Details of private business matters are not covered.