Three articles I wrote for the Japan-Korea Editathon March 2026

From March 23 to April 17, 2026, the “Japan-Korea Friendship Editing Month March 2026“, commemorating Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary, was held online. Since the start of editathon in 2024, Wikimedians from Korea and Japan have deepened their exchanges, including mutual participation in Wikimedia conferences held in both countries last year. And this spring, a four-week international editathon was held. I wrote and revised three articles related to Korea during this editathon, which I would like to introduce.

The World Cup Bridge

While preparing the Japanese Wikipedia page for Editathon, I went to the Commons to look for a suitable photo. That’s when I found this picture of the World Cup Bridge. For me, the World Cup refers to the 2002 Japan-Korea joint FIFA World Cup, and I vividly remember the excitement at the time. There are other World Cups besides soccer, and younger people probably don’t remember the 2002 matches, but I was happy to learn that there is a bridge in Korea named after it. I felt it was a symbol of bridging between the two countries, so I translated the English Wikipedia article into Japanese. I learned from the comments on the article that there is also a bridge with the same name in Yokohama, Japan.

Human Acts

To learn about other countries, I make it a point to read their literary works. Many Korean literary works have been introduced to Japan since ancient times, but this time I picked up Human Acts by Nobel Prize-winning author Han Kang. This 2014 work was translated into Japanese in 2016 and published by CUON inc., a publisher known for introducing Korean literature. While there was already an article about this work on the Japanese Wikipedia, it was rather brief, so I decided to read the book to add to it.

The work is based on the Gwangju Uprising that occurred in South Korea in 1980, but I knew absolutely nothing about the Gwangju Uprising. However, this work depicts what happened there and what became of the people who were there afterward from various perspectives. Also, by carefully reading book reviews, I gradually began to see the author’s position and the state of contemporary Korean literature. I then edited the information obtained from the work, information found through internet searches, and information researched at the library, and added to the original article. I wonder if I have been able to take a step closer to Korea and the Korean people.

Dattan no Uma (The Tatar House)

Korea appears in various ways in Japanese novels. Tsujihara Noboru‘s Dattan no Uma (The Tartar Horse) is set in Edo-period Japan, Korea, and Mongolia, and was published in 2011. I remember eagerly reading it every day when it was serialized in the newspaper before that, and being overwhelmed by its grand scale, so I decided to write an article about it for this Japan-Korea Editathon. I didn’t have the hardcover book on hand, so I borrowed it from the library, but as I turned the pages, the thrilling plot brought back the same excitement, and I ended up buying the paperback version from a used bookstore.

When I looked into book reviews, I found several, so I decided to go to the National Diet Library and read them all. I requested books and magazines to read, and I also checked condensed editions and microfilms in the newspaper reading room, bringing home copies of the articles I needed. I brought my laptop with me, but I got so engrossed in writing another article Human Acts that it was already evening, so I worked from home. I was so happy when I found book reviews by Ikuo Kameyama, a scholar of Russian literature, and Yuko Tanaka, former president of Hosei University and a scholar of Edo culture. When the article I published was selected as a “new article” in Wikipedian’s voting, I was truly glad I participated in this editathon.

Looking at the Editathon page, you can see that many people from both Japan and Korea contributed, creating and adding to numerous articles. It’s wonderful to see this kind of exchange spreading through Wikipedia.