KIDS IN ACTION
January 2006

Japanese and Korean Kids Talk in Pictures

	"I like games so much, I play them all day." (NPO Pangaea)

"Do you like games?" asked the Japanese kid. The South Korean kid replied, "I like games so much, I play them all day!" Amazingly, this conversation happened even though the Japanese child cannot speak Korean, and the South Korean child cannot speak Japanese.

A groundbreaking experiment was conducted between Tokyo and Seoul on November 20, designated as Universal Children's Day by the United Nations. In the experiment, kids from Japan and South Korea "talked" to each other using pictographs (pictures used to convey words and ideas).

	The Japanese kids greet their Korean friends on screen. (NPO Pangaea)

In the Shibuya district of Tokyo, 28 elementary and middle school students gathered and wrote self-introductions and questions using pictographs. There are 200 of these pictographs stored in the computers they used. "You" is represented by a picture of a person pointing; "like" by a picture of a heart; and "sports" by a picture of soccer balls and baseballs. The children selected the images they wanted to use and strung them together on the screen to form sentences.

"I like sports. Do you like sports?" A fifth-grade boy created this message and sent it via the Internet to a group of children in South Korea whom he was "meeting" for the first time. The 13 Korean children gathered in the South Korean capital, Seoul, then sent a reply and a new question.

The kids discuss how to answer a question. (NPO Pangaea)

This experiment, in which children were able to communicate with one another even though they don't understand each other's languages, was a big success. When asked what they thought of the experience, one of the Japanese kids replied, "I'm surprised I was able to talk directly with people from Korea," while another said, "I want to talk with kids from lots of different countries and learn more about the world." One of the kids in South Korea said, "I was happy to learn that Japanese kids like Korea." Children from both countries became more familiar with their counterparts than they were prior to this activity.

According to the non-profit organization Pangaea, which developed the pictographs and sponsored the activity, some 20 countries have expressed interest in participating in similar events. In spring 2006, children from Austria and Kenya will be next to take part in this exchange.

In addition, Pangaea also plans to deliver PCs and other necessary equipment by truck to regions that cannot access the Internet. Soon kids from all over the world may be able to communicate with one another using pictures!