Seoul Int'l Book Fair faces another year without state funding

Yoon Chul-ho, president of the Korean Publishers Association, speaks during a New Year's press conference in Seoul, Wednesday. Newsis

This year’s Seoul International Book Fair (SIBF) and the operation of the Korean pavilion at overseas book fairs will once again proceed without direct government funding, as the dispute between the culture ministry and the event’s organizer, the Korean Publishers Association (KPA), stretches into its second year.

“Just like last year, the government subsidies for our association’s initiatives remain at zero,” KPA President Yoon Chul-ho said Wednesday during a press conference in Seoul. “Last year’s events were funded entirely through donations from our publisher members, as well as membership and booth fees paid by participating agencies. This year will likely be no different; we will once again rely on our own budget to stage them.”

The conflict began in July 2023 when the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism accused the publisher association, which receives state subsidies to run the SIBF, of failing to provide a detailed breakdown of earnings from 2018 to 2022. The government later demanded the return of excess profits made from the fair.

In response, the KPA maintained that while it had submitted the required expenditure reports detailing how the subsidies were spent, it was under no legal obligation as a private entity to return profits to the state. The association subsequently filed an administrative lawsuit challenging the decision, which remains unresolved to this day.

The 2024 SIBF was the first in the event’s seven-decade history to be held without state subsidies. The culture ministry withheld the originally allocated budget of 670 million won ($460,000) for the fair’s organizer, instead reorienting it to directly support individual participating publishers.

“Even that (redistributed) funding has been drastically cut to just 200 million won this year,” Yoon noted.

Visitors crowd the 2024 Seoul International Book Fair at COEX in southern Seoul, June 26, 2024. Yonhap

The KPA president emphasized that book fairs are an integral, year-round pillar of the publishing ecosystem, not just a one-off event that can be outsourced to a single agency.

“The culture ministry seems to believe that participating in overseas book fairs can simply be handled through partnerships with Korean Cultural Centers abroad, while domestic fairs can be handed off to event agencies,” he said.

“But this approach overlooks the fundamental role these fairs play in the industry. The KPA has been organizing the SIBF since the 1950s and has spent decades building a global network through participation in major international events like the Frankfurt Book Fair since the '70s.”