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Korea National Parks for All: Visitor Services Using Sign Language


The Korean National Parks Visitor Services has adopted sign language to cater for the deaf and hard of hearing community. Illustrated encyclopedias and nature commentary videos using sign language have been produced to help deaf visitors learn about the different plants and animals in the national parks.

Visitor services using sign language ©KNPS


In 2020, Bukhansan National Park published a sign language-based illustrated encyclopedia of insects and plants, featuring 60 common species from the national park. To overcome the lack of sign words for flora and fauna, sign language specialists cooperated with park rangers to create new sign names. In 2021, an additional 50 species of insects and plants were included in the encyclopedia. An illustrated encyclopedia for birds and mammals will be published in 2022.

Sign language-based illustrated encyclopedia ©KNPS


In Juwangsan National Park, a sign language-based nature commentary video has been produced with the cooperation of the local sign language interpretation centre. The video introduces the ecology, folklore and major attractions of Juwangsan, using sign language for the deaf and hard of hearing community, who previously had limited opportunities to learn about nature because of the lack of materials using sign language.

Sign language-based nature commentary video ©KNPS


Until recently, there were only 61 words for flora and fauna in the Korean sign language dictionary – accounting for just 0.3 per cent of the 17,242 words in the dictionary. This has made it challenging to communicate effectively about ecology and conservation through sign language. However, through this series of projects, KNPS hopes to significantly increase the number of ecological terms that can be expressed using sign language and to lay the foundations and standards for the production of future illustrated encyclopedias. The aim is to expand these services to all 22 national parks by 2022, and in doing so, to create more opportunities for discrimination-free visitor services.

For more information, please watch the short video available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFmbrueUVMo&t=100s

About the Korea National Park Service (KNPS)

The Korea National Park Service (KNPS) is a professional protected area management organization established in 1987. It manages around thirty per cent of Korea’s protected areas, including 21 national parks. KNPS commits its resources to achieve conservation and sustainable use of national parks and provides support to locally-managed protected areas.