Gwangyang-si Maedoli Advances to Finals of 'Our Neighborhood Character Award'

Maedoli Aims to Become South Korea's Representative Character

‘Maedoli,’ the representative character of Gwangyang City, Jeollanam-do, has advanced to the finals of the 「2023 6th Our Neighborhood Character Awards」, challenging for the nationwide number one character title.

The 「Our Neighborhood Character Awards」 is hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and organized by the Korea Creative Content Agency. It evaluates characters created by the government, local governments nationwide, and public institutions based on planning background, design, completeness, and other criteria to select the grand prize winner.

[Image provided by Gwangyang-si]

This year, a total of 137 candidates competed fiercely, and 30 characters, including ‘Maedoli,’ advanced to the finals.

In the finals, the final ranking is determined by combining 50% of the public voting score and 50% of the expert judging score. The public voting will be held from the 11th of this month until the 20th of next month.

‘Maedoli’ was developed by personifying the local agricultural specialty, maesil (plum), as a mischievous boy. The name ‘Maedoli’ combines ‘Mae’ from maesil and ‘Doli,’ a cute boy’s name.

Born in 2010, ‘Maedoli’ is an eternally 10-year-old creative prankster who is polite and embodies the bright green maesil itself.

‘Maedoli’ is also very talented, appearing on the ‘Oroshi Gwangyang’ YouTube channel and Gwangyang City’s Instagram, delivering information about the city’s tourist attractions as well as policies and projects needed by citizens in an easy-to-understand way, gaining great popularity.

In particular, in 2023, ‘Maedoli’ was appointed as Gwangyang City’s promotional ambassador and has been actively fulfilling the role at representative festivals such as the Gwangyang Maehwa Festival and the Gwangyang Jeoneo Festival.

Voting is easy and simple for anyone; just access the ‘Our Neighborhood Character’ website and log in with Kakao.

Gwangyang City has also prepared a voting certification event offering generous prizes such as ‘Maedoli doll sets’ to encourage citizens to vote and raise awareness of the Maedoli character.

Jung Hae-jong, Director of the Public Relations and Communication Office, said, “Maedoli has established itself as Gwangyang City’s representative character and is receiving great love from citizens. We hope for the active interest and participation of citizens supporting Maedoli so that it can grow beyond Gwangyang City to become a representative character of Korea.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.