Press Release No. 536, Issued on 31 Mar. 2009

Citizens Association for Studying Consumer Problems

Song Bo-Kyung, President of Consumer Report, Wins Yu Gwan-sun Award

- Dr. Song Bo-kyung recognized as a pioneer in consumer campaigns for organizing transparent and clean consumer campaigns for over 30 years -

Dr. Song Bo-kyung(Professor at Seoul Women’s University and President of Consumer Report) won an award at the ‘8^th Yu Gwan-sun Award’. The Yu Gwan-sun Award Committee (Chairman Lee Wan-gu, Governor of Chungcheongnam-do) explained that Dr. Song Bo-kyung was nominated for the ‘8^th Yu Gwan-sun Award’ because “She’s a female activist who organized transparent and clean consumer campaigns for more than 30 years.”

Dr. Song Bo-kyung set a role model as a pioneer and volunteer who has dedicated to consumer campaigns and activities in Korea for the past 30 years. She has been making great contributions to the protection of consumer rights, realization of social justice, and organization of voluntary consumer campaigns by proposing the right directions for consumer campaigns for Koreans since the early 1970’s when most of Koreans were not even unfamiliar with the term ‘consumer rights’.

She also showed Korean consumer campaigns to the world by participating in international activities while serving as a director and vice-chairman of the Consumers International with 220 organizations from 115 countries as members since early 2000. She is recognized for extending and developing the professional area of Korean consumer campaigns by proposing policies and formulating bills.

She has been making efforts to teach and enlighten consumers by organizing consumer campaigns in terms of sustainable consumption while stressing the importance of consumer responsibilities. For example, she highlighted the importance of ‘Ensuring sustainable growth and establishing sustainable consumption patterns’ for non-government organizations, academia, and media.

In particular, she played a major role in the publication of ‘Consumer Report’, a magazine designed to provide accurate information to consumers for them to choose products. Consumer Report provides global standard product quality comparison test results in affiliation with the ICRT (International Consumer Research & Testing), as well as other useful information to Korean consumers so they can make reasonable choices in the global market.

As a consumer and social activist who has organized transparent and clean campaigns, she can truly be called a role model female leader with respect for life, freedom, and dedication who has inherited the noble mind of the patriot, Yu Gwan-sun.

‘Dr. Song Bo-kyung Will Receive the Yu Gwan-sun Award’ on March 31 (Tue)

The ceremony will be held at Yu Gwan-sun Memorial Hall, Seoul Ewha Girls’ High School, the school Yu Gwan-sun attended, at 2:00pm.

Your interest and participation will be appreciated.

We particularly welcome the participation and presence of activists from consumer organizations.

▶Information: Citizens Association for Studying Consumer Problems ((02)-739-5441)