Konkuk University mascot contest was held from March 11 to April 14 by The General Student Association (GSA), CHEONG SHIM. The reason of CHEONG SHIM opened the contest is that Konkuk university was established about 90 years ago but there is no mascot to represent KU. The purpose of the contest was to select a new mascot character to improve the positive effect on KU. CHEONG SHIM also thought that it could derive attention and attachment to KU of the enrolled students by searching for a new mascot.

The idea behind the contest was to create a new character which can represent fresh, young sensitivity at KU. Approximately 130 students applied for the contest and the works of character were evaluated by seven examiners. (Office of Student Affairs, Public Relations, and five professors from the each different departments, Department of Digital Culture, Department of Business Administration, Department of Media Communication, Department of Communication Design, and Department of Industrial Design)

The appraisal standards of characters were subject suitability, reality of content, creativity, logicality, the opinion of the examiners and so on. They scored the characters from 10 to 2 based on these standards and finally awarded one Grand Prize, two Best prizes, four Excellence awards, in addition the applicants who didn’t get a prize received goods.

The Grand Prize winning mascot was the ‘KU’, Bull character created by Park Joon-sun, student from Mechanical Engineering. It has several meanings of youth, faithfulness and the existing significance of the KU Bull. It wears a green jacket with a KU logo on it. In addition to the ‘KU’ Bull, there is another character that describes the ducks which live in Il-gam lake called ‘Kon-Duck’.

These mascots will be used for the representative of KU in the educational part, as well as in the emoticon of Kakaotalk, promotion of products made by Konkuk Milk and Konkuk Dairy industry.

By Kim Yeon-su