Park Chan-wook, AI and stories that shape us: Highlights from Seoul Int'l Book Fair

Cannes-winning filmmaker and devoted bibliophile Park Chan-wook, right, speaks during a talk at this year's Seoul International Book Fair at COEX in southern Seoul, Friday. Yonhap

This year’s Seoul International Book Fair (SIBF) opened in a blaze of literary fanfare.

Tickets had sold out a week in advance. On opening day, Wednesday, throngs of visitors lined up well over an hour before the doors parted. If the momentum mirrors last year, more than 150,000 people are expected to pass through the fair’s halls by the time it closes, Sunday.

Among the event’s luminaries were some of today’s most magnetic young literary voices: “Cursed Bunny” author Bora Chung, “Ghost Town” writer Kevin Chen and Cheon Seon-ran, whose sci-fi bestseller “A Thousand Blues” recently inked a Hollywood film deal.

But it wasn’t only authors who drew crowds. Cultural heavyweights brought their own kind of gravity — former President Moon Jae-in, now the proprietor of indie bookstore Pyeongsan Books; Cannes-winning filmmaker and devoted bibliophile Park Chan-wook; and actor-publisher Park Jeong-min, head of Muze.

By the fair’s third day, the energy hadn’t waned, with the venue still buzzing with readers. Adding to the fervor were talks that were enough to stop even the rustle of turning pages.

From the literary inspirations that shaped Park Chan-wook’s cinematic world to reflections on how artificial intelligence (AI) may forever redefine what it means to create, here are some highlights from those conversations.

A scene from Park Chan-wook's "The Handmaiden" (2016) / Courtesy of CJ ENM

Park Chan-wook: From page to picture

Beyond his cinematic triumphs, visionary auteur Park harbors an enduring love for literature — a passion that pulses through his filmography.

Many of his works are boldly imaginative adaptations of novels and comics, brought to life across both big and small screens. From his breakout hit “Joint Security Area” to “Oldboy,” “Thirst,” “The Handmaiden,” “The Little Drummer Girl,” “The Sympathizer” and the upcoming black comedy thriller “No Other Choice,” Park continues his alchemy of transforming the written word into unforgettable images.

Literary critic Shin Hyung-chul observed: “If ‘Oldboy’ restructured the spine of its source material, ‘Thirst’ gave it wings and ‘The Handmaiden’ gave it legs to run across open plains.”

The filmmaker himself said that the emphasis he places when adapting a literary work naturally varies from project to project. In “Joint Security Area,” what drew him was the humanization of North Korean characters — a risky perspective seldom explored in a divided Korea until then. With “Oldboy,” it was the core premise of the original comic that sparked his imagination: a man suddenly imprisoned without explanation, left to wonder who put him there, why and whether he’ll ever get out.

“There are plenty of films about people escaping from prison or finishing their sentence, but I’d never seen a setup quite like this. To me, it felt like a distilled metaphor for life itself. We don’t know why we were born, where our lives are headed, or how and when they’ll end,” the director said.

A scene from Park Chan-wook's "Oldboy" (2003) / Courtesy of CJ Entertainment

In “Thirst,” the unlikely collision of Emile Zola’s “Therese Raquin” and a short vampire synopsis Park had once written, both seething with aggressive desire, gave rise to the film. And with “The Handmaiden,” it was his impulse, while reading Sarah Waters’ “Fingersmith,” to rewrite the fate of the two female protagonists and grant them a more radical possibility.

When asked whether there are any Korean novels he dreams of adapting, Park was quick to preface his answer with a gentle disclaimer that this was “more of a daydream, something that simply makes me feel good when I think about it.”

That novel is Nobel Prize-winning Han Kang’s “Human Acts.”

“Even after just the first chapter, I felt it was already a masterpiece,” the director said.

He also mentioned Park Kyong-ni’s 20-volume epic “Toji” and Lee Mun-ku’s eight-volume serial “Kwanchonsupil” as works he would love to see brought to life in a series.

“I’m getting older now, and it’s harder to keep up physically,” he said, smiling. “Filming a full-length series would be such a long undertaking that I’m not sure I could pull it off. But still…”

Journalist-turned-writer Chang Kang-myoung speaks during a talk at this year's Seoul International Book Fair, Friday. Korea Times photo by Park Han-sol

Chang Kang-myoung: Dissecting AI’s blow to human creativity

You might think you’ve heard it all when it comes to the ominous rise of AI in the creative world. But journalist-turned writer Chang manages to bring fresh food for thought in his new literary reportage, “The Future That Arrived First.”

Based on in-depth interviews with 36 professional "go" players, he begins by diving into the profound shifts AI has brought to the landscape of go since AlphaGo’s historic victory over world champion Lee Se-dol in 2016. His inquiry doesn’t stop at the game board, however. Naturally, and almost inevitably, it expands into the wider terrain of human creativity, asking how technology might forever reshape the intellectual pursuits we’ve long held sacred.

One of the most striking shifts is in the relationship between creator and audience. In the world of go, when top players once faced off in world championship finals, most viewers couldn’t fully grasp their moves. So they watched with reverence, trusting that each hand-placed stone carried some hidden depth.

But that reverence is fading. “Now, when we watch a match, we already know the AI-recommended next moves. And if the human player doesn’t follow them? We think, ‘Oh, he made a mistake.’ The awe is gone. AI even calculates their win probabilities; it’s like watching horse races,” Chang said.

Literature may not be far behind. A time may come when AI not only generates novels, but also evaluates the entirety of human literature, ranking works with cold statistical measures of merit.

World go champion Lee Se-dol makes his first move against Google's AI-powered AlphaGo during a game of the Google DeepMind Challenge Match in Seoul in 2016. AP-Yonhap

Then how can a human creator stand out? If skill alone no longer suffices, should we instead emphasize the degree of personal hardship — how much time and labor went into the work, how truly “handmade” is it?

“After AlphaGo, the highest-level matches available to us became those between AI programs. But they contain no struggle. Rather, curiously, women’s and senior go leagues started gaining popularity. Here, emotions run high, mistakes are made. You can feel the effort.”

The problem, he argues, isn’t that we fail to understand AI. It’s that we haven’t taken the time to reflect on how it’s already reshaping us. We’re too busy mastering prompts for ChatGPT to pause and ask what this all means for human creativity itself.

The writer believes that sparking a degree of fear — not paralyzing panic, but sobering foresight — may be essential for responsible collective action. Just as George Orwell warned in “1984,” and as philosopher Hans Jonas proposed with his “heuristics of fear,” a glimpse of what could go wrong can serve as a moral compass before it’s too late.

That’s why, Chang insists, the conversation must go on.