中文Ask a teenager what they want to be, and you will hear a lot of answers. Astronaut. Gamer. Maybe a YouTuber. You will almost never hear “screen printer.” And that, quietly, is one of the biggest threats facing the print industry anywhere on earth: nobody is lining up to replace the people getting ready to retire.
In South Korea, the Screen Printing Association of Korea — SPAK — has decided to do something about it. And they are doing it the only way that actually works with young people: by putting ink on their hands.
A summer academy that changed a few minds
Over the summer, SPAK ran a Youth Screen Printing Academy for 11 pupils from Dongsung Secondary School, hosted at the Seoul Printing Centre. The instructors were no token volunteers — they were working print professionals. Lee Hye-na, CEO of Heina Atelier, and Jeong Yong-hee, CEO of Dot Dot Studio, both members of SPAK’s 28th Executive Committee and its Daegu Branch, led the session.
The students got the full picture: the history and role of the printing industry, the different methods and where they show up in daily life. Then came the part they will remember — a hands-on activity where they actually ran the printing process themselves. Not a video. Not a slide. Their own two hands pulling a print.
That is the secret. You do not recruit the next generation of printers by explaining print to them. You recruit them by letting them make something.
A vision bigger than one workshop
Cho Won-hyoung, Manager of SPAK, is clear that this is just the start. The association plans to keep raising young people’s awareness of the industry’s value, expand career-experience activities, and hunt for future talent. They intend to deepen cooperation with schools and related organisations, giving kids real opportunities to explore a career they never knew existed.
It is a social role as much as a commercial one: nurture the talent, and the industry’s sustainable future takes care of itself.
Turning a trade show into a playground
SPAK also showed up at K-Print 2026 with hands-on programmes that let visitors experience screen and specialty printing directly. And this is where it gets genuinely clever — they made sustainability the fun part.
In the “Tote Bag Screen Printing Experience,” participants printed their own tote using GRS-certified, recycled, eco-friendly plastisol ink. Pick one of three colours, single-pass printing, and you have a bag you made yourself — and a quiet lesson in sustainable printing. No lecture required.
There were monotype artwork sessions and even high-precision MBTI keycap pad printing, a playful nod to the personality-test craze that swept East Asia. Smart. Meet young people where their interests already are, then slip the printing lesson in through the back door.
Why the rest of the world should copy this
Every mature print market faces the same demographic cliff. Europe, North America, Australia — all wondering where the next wave of press operators, screen printers, and finishers will come from. SPAK’s playbook is cheap, scalable, and proven: partner with schools, use real working printers as instructors, and make the first encounter hands-on and a little bit fun.
The industry loves to talk about innovation in machinery and materials. But the most important innovation of all might be this — convincing a 14-year-old that pulling a print is cooler than they thought. South Korea is showing one way to do it. The question for everyone else is simply: what are we waiting for?
Source: FESPA (October 13, 2026), by James Hundleby.
