The evolution of bookstores in Korea (KOR)

Shin June-bong

The author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo. 

In Park Tae-won’s novella “Half a Year” (1933), Korean students studying in Tokyo haggle over the price of a book at a bookstore near Jinbocho. The book in question is German author Erich Maria Remarque’s antiwar novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1929), listed at 1.50 yen, less than 1 cent. The clerk insists on receiving at least 70 sen, or seven-tenths of 1 yen. One of the students, Cho Suk-hui, proposes a compromise: 50 sen for the book itself and 20 sen as a donation. In the end, he pays the requested 70 sen, though he consoles himself with the thought that the book’s true price was only 50.

It is a small act of psychological triumph. Yet one wonders whether the bookstores of colonial Korea, which imported modernity through Japan, were shaped by similar tensions and compromises.

The earliest bookstores that emerged towards the end of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) were often combined with stationery shops. Such businesses not only sold books but also produced them. Later came the age of dedicated publishing bookstores. During the colonial period, Jongno’s night market became one of Seoul's most famous attractions.

Popular fiction known as “ttakji editions” flooded the stalls. The books earned their nickname because their brightly colored covers resembled cards from the children’s game of the same name. After liberation in 1945, streetcorner bookstores enjoyed a golden age. According to Kang Sung-ho’s “The Age of Bookstores” (2022), countless new publishers sprang up in the postwar years, but with few established retail channels available, many resorted to selling books from makeshift stands on city streets.

Book critic Han Mi-hwa argues that bookstores began to develop a new self-awareness in the 1990s, coming to see themselves as cultural spaces rather than mere retail outlets. For decades, bookstores had largely displayed whatever wholesalers supplied. By the 2010s, however, independent neighborhood bookstores emerged in which owners exercised their own judgment over what to stock, embracing the role now known as curation.

More recently, a third generation of bookstores has appeared, some charging admission fees to enter. Han describes this development in her book “Exploring the Sustainability of Neighborhood Bookstores.”

One such curated bookstore was novelist Han Kang’s Chaekbang, Oneul (meaning “Bookstore, Today”) in Seoul’s Tongui-dong, which closed its doors last week. The immediate reason was that the building housing the store had been sold. But Han had already acknowledged deeper difficulties. In a 2022 interview, she said the bookstore was “chronically running large deficits.”

Even a Nobel Prize-winning writer proved unable to overcome the public’s declining interest in reading.

Three days before Han Kang opened her bookstore, sociologist Noh Myung-woo, a professor at Ajou University, launched Nieun Bookstore near Yeonsinnae Station on Sept. 2, 2018. At the time, he argued that “it is time to redefine the space known as the bookstore” and that people should actively engage in activities centered on books in whatever form possible.

His remarks reflected a growing awareness that the closure of bookstores is no longer someone else’s problem. More than 1,000 neighborhood bookstores now operate across the country, each searching for ways to survive in a society where reading rates continue to fall.

The transformation of bookstores mirrors broader changes in Korean society. They have evolved from stationery shops into publishing houses, from street stalls into curated cultural venues and from commercial spaces into places where communities gather around books. Yet their future remains uncertain.

Faced with historically low levels of reading, the question is no longer simply how bookstores have changed. It is what, if anything, we are willing to do to preserve them.

서점의 변천

신준봉 논설위원

소설가 박태원의 1933년 중편 ‘반년간’에는 한인 유학생들이 도쿄 진보초 근처 한 책사(冊肆)에서 책값 흥정을 하는 장면이 나온다. 정가 1원 50전, 책사의 점원은 반드시 70전은 받아야겠다는 독일 작가 레마르크의 1929년 반전소설 『서부전선 이상 없다』를 한인 청년 조숙희는 50전은 책값, 20전은 기부금이라며 실제로는 70전을 주고 산다. 자신이 지불한 마음속의 책값은 50전일 뿐이라는 일종의 정신승리일 텐데, 일본을 통해 근대를 수입한 식민지 조선의 서점 풍경도 이런 에피소드와 비슷한 구석이 있지 않았을까.

구한말 최초의 서점들은 지물포를 겸했다. 지물포가 책도 만들어 팔았다. 지물포를 떼어낸 ‘출판서점’의 시대, 종로 야시장이 경성의 명물이었다. 표지가 딱지처럼 울긋불긋하다고 해서 딱지본 소설이라고 불렸던 대중물이 야시장에 풀렸다. 해방 직후는 노점책방의 전성시대. 우후죽순 생겨난 출판사들이 쏟아낸 책들을 팔 공간이 마땅치 않자 길거리 좌판에서 팔기 시작했다는 것이다.(강성호, 『서점의 시대』)

출판평론가 한미화씨는 1990년대 들어 책방이 일종의 문화공간이라는 자의식이 싹 텄다고 본다. 도매상이 공급해주는 대로 진열해 놓고 책을 파는 관행에서 벗어나 책방 주인이 도서 선택, 즉 큐레이션 기능을 행사하는 동네책방이 2010년대 들어 생겨났다. 최근에는 입장료를 받는 3세대 서점까지 등장했다.(『동네책방 지속 탐구』)

지난주 문 닫은 소설가 한강의 서울 통의동 ‘오늘책방’은 큐레이션 책방이었다. 문 닫은 직접적인 이유는 세 든 건물이 팔려서였지만 2022년 한 인터뷰에서 “만성적으로 큰 폭의 적자를 내고 있다”고 밝혔다. 노벨상 작가도 어쩌지 못한 독서 무관심이다.

한강의 서점보다 사흘 빠른 2018년 9월 2일, 3호선 연신내역 부근에 ‘니은서점’을 연 사회학자 노명우씨(아주대 교수)는 “이제는 서점이라는 공간을 재규정해야 할 때” “어떤 형태로든 책을 매개로 한 활동을 활발히 해야 할 때”라고 말했다. 폐점이 남의 일이 아니라는 얘기다. 동네책방은 전국적으로 1000개가 넘는다. 최악의 독서율 앞에서 우리는 무슨 일을 할 수 있을까.