April 13th, 2011 Part1 @Seoul
One of the purposes of this trip is to visit the offices of street magazines (http://www.street-papers.org/). International Network of Street Paper(INSP) says there are 114 papers in 40 countries. You may ask “What is street magazine, anyway?” Street magazine is paper media sold by homeless people on the street. Selling those magazines could be a great opportunity for homeless people to connect with the society and be independent economically again.
The first country I visited this time is Korea, where a street magazine “The Big Issue Korea” has been sold（http://bigissuekr.tistory.com/）since July 2010.
Their office is 15-minute walk from the youth hostel I stay. On the way, I really enjoyed the smell of fresh fruits. The office is located in the midst of famous fruit market, Yungdeungpo.
As soon as I knocked the door and said “Annyon hase yo---,“ a dozen of staffs of The Big Issue Korea(TBIK) in their 20s through 30s welcomed me with the greeting back.
Editor-in-chief of TBIK, Koo Hyeon Jee used to work as an editor of a kids magazine. The news, however, saying that TBIK had just launched intrigued her and gravitated to work here. “’This world is worth living,’ this is the message I want to share with vendors and readers,” she said.
The sixty percent of twenty-four staffs are paid by Seoul city by the entrepreneur help law of 2007. Nine editorial staffs, including a designer and a photographer have lunch together every day like a family. Trying to publish the magazine twice a month, instead of once, in May, seemed to make them extremely hectic.