Samsung Life Public Welfare Foundation Announces 2026 Samsung Happiness Awards Recipients; Professor Eunkook Suh Among Eight

[Financial News] The Samsung Life Public Welfare Foundation has selected the recipients of the 2026 Samsung Happiness Awards, recognizing contributions to promoting public happiness and social development. This year’s honorees include happiness psychologist Eunkook Suh, a professor at Yonsei University; Ko Seok, director of the Songpa Safety Experience Education Center, who has worked to promote a culture of child safety; and Autistar, a social enterprise that supports autistic young adults in achieving independence. 
The Samsung Life Public Welfare Foundation announced on the 21st that it had selected the recipients of the 2026 Samsung Happiness Awards. 
The Samsung Happiness Awards are presented each year in four categories—Research and Creativity, Society and Safety, Integration and Inclusion, and Youth—to individuals who have contributed to improving public happiness and advancing the public good, as well as exemplary young people who will lead the future of society. 
This year’s recipients are: in the Research and Creativity category, happiness psychologist Eunkook Suh (60), a professor at Yonsei University, who emphasizes that happiness depends more on enjoyable everyday experiences and positive interactions with others than on material abundance; in the Society and Safety category, Ko Seok (63), director of the Songpa Safety Experience Education Center, who, as a parent of a victim of the 1999 Sea Land fire, founded the Korea Child Safety Foundation with other bereaved families and has been devoted to promoting a culture of child safety; and in the Integration and Inclusion category, Autistar, a social enterprise founded in 2012, which has provided young autistic people with artistic talent with opportunities to work as professional designers. 
The Youth category recipients were selected as young people who, despite difficult circumstances, have not given up and continue striving toward their dreams, while showing warmheartedness by sharing what they have with those around them. The student recipients are Kwon Young-joo (23, third-year student at Soongsil University), Jeong Yun-seo (22, third-year student at the Catholic University of Korea), An Ye-eun (20, third-year student at Seoul Dasom Tourism High School), Lee Yu-bin (18, third-year student at Seogwipo Industrial Science High School), and Kim Tae-yang (17, second-year student at Wando High School). 
The Samsung Life Public Welfare Foundation said, "The recipients were selected from among candidates recommended by institutions, organizations, and experts from various fields across the country, following a three-month review by a judging committee composed of scholars and experts in each field."  
Recipients in each category will receive a plaque and a prize of 50 million won each (10 million won each for the youth recipients). The awards ceremony will be held on the afternoon of November 30 at the Leeum Museum of Art in Hannam-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul. 

[email protected] Im Su-bin Reporter