Posco Cheongam Foundation names Heo Won-bae second 'Cheongam Heroes' honoree

The Posco Cheongam Foundation announced Tuesday that it has selected Heo Won-bae, chairman of the Bucheon Council for Sustainable Development, as the second recipient of its Cheongam Heroes award, presenting the honor at a ceremony at Posco Center in Seoul.

The Cheongam Heroes program recognizes unsung contributors who have quietly practiced sharing and spread positive influence throughout their communities. Recipients receive a prize of 30 million won ($22,300) and a commemorative plaque.

Heo has spent more than four decades advancing his conviction of "standing alongside the socially vulnerable" across agriculture, welfare, education and the environment, contributing to the building of healthy communities.

In 1982, when he was in his 20s, Heo organized a group of young farmers in a rural village in Asan, South Chungcheong Province, to practice pesticide-free natural farming. That group later grew into Pureundeul Agricultural Cooperative, providing an economic foundation for more than 400 producers to trade directly with urban consumers.

Heo subsequently expanded his work to championing the rights of the socially vulnerable. From 1985, over nearly 40 years, he served in a wide range of roles — committee member, director, center head and board chairman — at various public-interest organizations, consistently working for his community and leading efforts to resolve neighborhood conflicts and restore social cohesion.

In education, he served as a university professor and board chairman, nurturing the next generation and promoting a transparent and healthy academic environment. He also worked through a civic group focused on accessibility facilities for people with disabilities, pushing to secure mobility rights and improve welfare systems for the disabled.

For the past decade or so, he has focused on environmental and community initiatives. As chairman of the Bucheon Council for Sustainable Development, Heo has led efforts on climate change response and ecological conservation, building a public-private-academic governance framework through educational networks that bring together civic society, local universities, youth and students from elementary through high school.

Those efforts have been recognized as a model case for resolving local agendas, earning him the grand prize — a ministerial award — at the 2025 Sustainable Development Competition.

"We will continue to discover and encourage heroes who add value to the world with warmth from the front lines of life," a foundation official said.

Meanwhile, the Posco Cheongam Foundation has been carrying out a range of social contribution activities. It recently selected 40 recipients of its 2026 Posco Vision Scholarships and held a certificate presentation ceremony at Stay 1538, an in-house resort facility in Pyeongchang, Gangwon Province.

Since introducing the Posco Vision Scholarship program in 2006, the foundation has provided 8.4 billion won in scholarships to a total of 682 university students over 21 years through this year.