Minumsa: witness of Korean publishing history
Park Maeng-ho, founder and president of Minumsa, has released his autobiography “The Book” summing up his 46-year career in the publishing industry. / Courtesy of Minumsa
By Chung Ah-young, Baek Byung-yeul
“The Book” by Park Maeng-ho; Minumsa: 332 pp., 18,000 won.
Having started in a rooftop room in Cheongjin-dong, Seoul in 1966, Minumsa has grown into a major publisher commanding five subsidiaries and publishing more than 5,000 titles over the last 46 years. It has uplifted the level of literature and other academic fields here through the discovery of promising authors.
All these achievements were made possible by the company’s founder and president Park Maeng-ho, who has recently released his first autobiography, “The Book.”
Summing up his 46-year publishing career, it reveals his passion, experiences and history of the Korean publishing group.
Turning 79 this year, he looks back on his life as a publisher with more sarcasm than joy as the industry suffers from recession. He has confronted every crisis facing the company with new ideas.
“When I was a university student, only Japanese books were published because it was just after the Korean War ended. There were no readable Korean books, and only pirated editions which consisted of low-quality designs, a monolithic book size with awful paper quality, were sold,” said Park at a recent press conference. The president felt a thirst for reading high-quality books and was then inspired to improve the quality of the Korean books. “Though I was asked several times previously to write my memoir, I turned them all down. But the publication industry is in recession, so it occurred to me that my autobiography might be helpful to current readers and publishers.”
The establishment of Minumsa was not accidental. Not surprisingly, Park was a literary enthusiast in his youth who almost won the Hankook Ilbo’s first Literature Awards with “Free Custom” in 1955. But his entry was abruptly withdrawn as the story contains satiric content of the dictatorial regime of the time. After that, he attempted several other debuts but failed. Back then, he was frustrated at his writing talents. Then he changed his mind from pursuing a writing career to discovering talented writers.
In the founding year, his company published its first book, “Yoga,” authored by Masahiro Oki and translated by Shin Dong-mun and it sold 15,000 copies, becoming the bestseller of that time. But the company was struggling a year later.
Despite the early ups and downs, Park launched Today’s Poets and World’s Poets series in the early 1970s which jumpstarted the publishing industry here, contributing to enhancing the level of the poetry publication. Poet Ko Un first met Park in 1966 and has since kept friendship with him. Cooperation with Ko and other aspiring poets such as Kim Hyun enabled him to launch the series, which ultimately contributed to strongly branding the company image as the “publisher of literature.”
Through Today’s Authors series, he discovered the then unknown authors such as Han Su-san, Park Young-han, Yi Mun-yol, Choi Seung-ho, Cho Seong-ki, Jung Mi-kyung and made their works published.
Particularly, Yi rose to fame through “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” a Chinese classic in 10 volumes, which sold more than 8 million copies.
Park also contributed to other academic fields such as liberal arts — philosophy and natural sciences — through the introduction of the foreign books.
Among others, “The Complete Works of World Literature” that began in 1998 is one of the most distinguished achievements of the company. Currently it has published 306 titles and Park said that he wants to publish 1,000 titles in the series.
He has also cooperated with book designer Jeong Byung-kyu to recreate book covers for 13 years. In the 1990s, he opened a new era of the publishing company by specializing in various fields of children’s books, science and culture through the subsidiaries.
“Man cannot be complete without books. Publishers should keep that in mind and introduce books to readers. It sounds cliche but it is the unchangeable truth,” he writes.
“Though people think of the publishing industry pessimistically, I think it has been a history of progress, not regression. If we keep making good books for readers, the publishing industry will be able to make progress,” Park added.