Lee Hae-rin is a City Desk reporter at The Korea Times, covering social issues, tourism and taekwondo. She is passionate about speaking up for the rights of minorities, including women, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities and animals as well as discovering the latest makgeolli trend in town. Feel free to reach her at lhr@koreatimes.co.kr.
Book lovers flock to buy cover art, collectibles, literary buns
Visitors look around Minumsa's pop-up store featuring its world literature series and poetry collections at Yongsan I'Park Mall in Seoul, Sunday. Korea Times photo by Lee Hae-rin
By Lee Hae-rin
Publisher Minumsa and convenience store chain GS25 launch special bakery
At noon on Sunday, the third floor of Yongsan’s I’Park Mall in Seoul offered a compact map of what is famous among young Koreans: Instagram-famous desserts, fashion labels, electronic keyboards, anime and Harry Potter merchandise. In the middle of it all, visitors were quietly leafing through Virginia Woolf, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ernest Hemingway and Jane Austen.
They had waited hours to get there.
The books were part of “Beyond the Sentence,” a temporary pop-up store by Minumsa, one of Korea’s best-known publishers, and character intellectual property brand Today’s Cuteness.
Running from Aug. 11 through Tuesday, the pop-up turns the publisher’s familiar World Literature series and poetry books into collectible objects, pairing classic covers with deliberately loose, childlike illustrations and wide-eyed animal characters. The project will move to Busan on Aug. 28 until Sept. 30.
The scene captures a growing publishing trend in Korea: books are no longer purchased only to be read. They are photographed, displayed, customized, carried and collected — a development tied to the so-called “text hip” movement, which frames reading and writing as markers of taste and personal identity.
At I’Park Mall, that cultural shift looked much like a launch event at luxury store.
People began lining up around 10 a.m., before the mall opened at 10:30 a.m. Advance reservations through Kakao had already sold out shortly after they opened. By noon, more than 700 people were registered in the on-site queuing system; after 2 p.m., the number passed 1,000, with estimated waits of three to four hours. Visitors received a phone alert when their turn arrived.
The line included uniformed soldiers on leave, groups of middle and high school students, couples in their 20s and 30s, solo shoppers and middle-aged couples.
Park Seung-hee, 31, said she spent about 70,000 won ($50) within 30 minutes of entering.
“I think Minumsa and its World Literature series are more appealing than other luxury or popular fashion brands,” Park said. “They are not expensive, but they remind me of the many good things I felt and learned while reading in my daily life. The designs are pretty and cute, too.”
Park said she joined the waiting list at 10:30 a.m., when nearly 100 people were already ahead of her. After collecting her number, she ate lunch at a nearby restaurant before receiving the call to enter around noon.
She bought parallel-cover editions of classics and Korean literature, two illustrated poetry books and several capsule-toy items, including a stuffed miniature-book key ring and screen cleaners inspired by Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” and George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”
Visitors look around Minumsa's pop-up store featuring its world literature series and poetry collections at Yongsan I'Park Mall in Seoul, Sunday. Korea Times photo by Lee Hae-rin
For a 23-year-old visitor surnamed Kim, the appeal was partly an antidote to social media. Kim, who reserved a visit after missing the crowded Seoul International Book Fair, bought Park Cham-sae’s new collection of poems “Jeongsinmeori” and Kim Hwa-jin’s new novel “The Devil Works Hard.”
“The more short-form content I see on social media, the more it feels like my brain is melting,” Kim said. “I’m trying to detox from it, and I’ve consciously started taking out paper books while commuting or whenever I have free time.”
Kim laughed when asked whether the new purchases would be read immediately.
“I don’t know when I will read them, but the covers were so cute and the titles were so memorable that I couldn’t but buy them,” Kim said.
The reading boom is also moving beyond Seoul. The third Busan Book & Content Fair over the weekend at BEXCO brought together publishers, independent presses, authors, digital content creators, artists and lifestyle brands.
The three-day event offered exhibitions, book talks, seminars and hands-on programs, with neighborhood bookstores and independent publishers showcasing small-run publications alongside design-forward reading goods. Its mix of books, web content, art and lifestyle products echoed the increasingly expansive definition of reading culture among younger Koreans — one in which a book fair can be as much a place to discover a tote bag, bookmark or zine as a new novel.
The trend has reached convenience stores, too.
On Friday, GS25 launched literary-themed breads in collaboration with Minumsa and Today’s Cuteness.
Seen are Minumsa's literary bread, a limited-edition selectino of baked goods themed after Minumsa’s World Literature Series and poetry collections, released at GS25, Friday. Each package contains a randomly selected bookmark from a collaboration between Minumsa and Today’s Cuteness. Captured from GS25’s Instagram
The first two products — a custard mocha bun inspired by Anton Chekhov’s “About Love” and a salty-milk chewy bread based on the Korean poetry collection “I Wanted to Cry Fresh Like a Wolf” — come with one of 20 random transparent bookmarks. Two more versions, including one based on “Pride and Prejudice,” are scheduled for release Tuesday.
Priced at 3,700 won for the mocha buns and 2,700 won for the chewy breads, the products transform book covers into snack packaging and a bookmark into the surprise inside.
The breads have reportedly been selling out at many GS25 locations soon after delivery, prompting shoppers to check the convenience store chain’s app for real-time nearby inventory and post their finds — or frustration at empty shelves — on social media.