A leading South Korean cosmetics company, AmorePacific Group has been selected as the top prize recipient of the Korea Image Awards 2015 for promoting South Korea’s image overseas, the organizer Corea Image Communication Institute announced on Monday.

This year’s Korea Image Stepping Stone Award goes to AmorePacific Group for “spreading Korean beauty and brand power all over the world through its innovative research and development,” the institute said in a statement.

Since 2005, CICI has honored persons, places or things that contributed to advocating Korea’s images around the world. In the past, Samsung Galaxy smartphone, singers Psy and Rain, PyeongChang Winter Olympics bid team and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon received the award. 

Chinese actress Tang Wei will receive the Korea Image Stepping Stone Bridge Award for her key role in spreading Korean culture to the global stage. The actress rose to international stardom through Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution” in 2007. She is popular here for starring in Korean director and her husband Kim Tae-yong’s “Late Autumn” in 2009. Since then, she has done many commercial shoots in Korea and hosted the Busan International Film Festival in 2012 as the first non-Korean.

Teenage short track speed skater Shim Suk-hee, who has won three medals at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, won the Korea Image Budding Youth Award, for her outstanding performances at the international games.

Sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korean Culture and Information Services, this year’s award ceremony is scheduled to be held at the InterContinental Seoul Coex on Jan. 12, 2015. Korean traditional music ensemble Dulsori and the original cast of the musical “Notre-Dame de Paris” will perform during the event.

By Ahn Sung-mi (sahn@heraldcorp.com)