Korean Books Accelerate Entry into French and Belgian Publishing Markets

An ongoing scene of an online publishing export consultation meeting.

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced on the 30th that, together with the Korea Publication Industry Promotion Agency, it will hold a non-face-to-face "Visiting Book Fair" from October 5 to 7 at COEX in Samseong-dong, Seoul, to help domestic publishing companies enter the French and Belgian markets.

Since 2015, the Ministry and the Publication Promotion Agency have been hosting the "Visiting Book Fair," a publishing copyright export consultation meeting, to support the overseas market entry of domestic publishing content. This year, following the three New Southern countries (April) and Russia (June), a non-face-to-face business-to-business (B2B) event will be held targeting the Western European region.

France is one of the most active countries in Europe in introducing Korean literature. Since Korea participated as the guest of honor at the Paris Book Fair in 2016, interest and recognition of Korean books and authors have steadily increased. Recently, in addition to pure literature, genre literature such as The Plotters (Kim Eansu) and The Origin of Species (Jung Yoo-jung), as well as various Korean books in different fields such as the graphic novel Two Women’s Stories (Song Aram), the children’s book The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly (Hwang Sun-mi), and picture books Mom Ppiyak (Baek Heena) and Wave, Let’s Play (Lee Suji) are receiving positive responses.

In Belgium, which marks the 120th anniversary of diplomatic relations with Korea this year, interest in publishing exchanges, including comics and webtoons, is increasing amid the atmosphere of expanding cultural exchange between the two countries. Accordingly, a B2B event between French and Belgian publishers and domestic publishers will be held for the first time to continue this trend.

About 16 companies will participate in this consultation, including the French leading publisher Group Bayard and Edition Philippe Picquier, which has published many Korean books. From Korea, 23 companies including Sagyejul Publishing and Bir Yongso will participate. In addition, publishing copyright agencies will participate and act as intermediaries for export consultations on 112 consigned domestic books.

A Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism official said, "We hope that the flow of Korean Wave in publishing will spread throughout Europe based on publishing exchanges with France and Belgium, which have cultural diversity and inclusiveness," and added, "We will continue to support various publishing exchange events in the European region to open export channels for domestic publishers."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.