VOL.81/2025.04

 

The Era of High Exchange Rates and the Korean Publishing Market

Readers ultimately respond to good content

 

2025.04.07

 

The structure of the Korean publishing market and translation-oriented publishing in the 1990s

 

I vividly remember the days when the Asian Financial Crisis hit Korea. The value of foreign currencies jumped one day. I waited for it to fall, but things didn’t go as expected. The value of foreign currencies continued to skyrocket, and the value of the Korean won plummeted. This was the situation in 1997. Until then, the Korean publishing market had been heavily dependent on importing translation rights to titles that could compete in Korea from overseas markets, mainly Japan and the English-speaking countries. In this climate, Korea was hit by the era of high exchange rates. By the time we had to pay the advance for a title contracted at 800 won per dollar, the exchange rate had nearly doubled to 1,600 won per dollar, which we had to settle and remit overseas. At the time, Korean publishers responded in different ways. Some publishers waited for the value of the foreign currency to drop, but when it didn’t, they gave up and canceled the contract, while others (after negotiating with foreign rights holders) halved the size of the advance again and paid it.
Given the burden of the high exchange rate, it can be said that the willingness to import Korean translation rights from abroad has been significantly dampened. One thing was certain: the publishing market in countries that are facing the pressure of high exchange rates in the process of importing and exporting published works is bound to be less willing to import translated rights than usual. Nevertheless, even though the volume of imports decreased during the Asian Financial Crisis, the import of translation rights continued steadily. By and large, general non-fiction titles, such as business books, were imported from Japan and the US, fiction titles were imported from the Anglo-American countries centered on the US, and humanities, liberal arts, and children’s picture books were imported from the US and Europe. This is partly because the Korean publishing market had been heavily dependent on works produced in overseas publishing markets. At the same time, it can also be seen that it had been somewhat limited in securing books written by Korean authors that could cover a wide range of domestic readers with different interests.

 

The growth of the Korean publishing market and diversification of content since the 2000s

 

However, from 2000 onward, the Korean publishing market began to evolve and develop rapidly. Prior to this point, it had been largely centered on the import, translation, and publication of foreign titles. However, from this point onward, titles in various fields developed and produced in Korea began entering the overseas publishing market. Since 2000, Korean children’s educational comic book series, such as the Why series by Yerimdang and the Survival series by Mirae N, have started to be actively exported to countries such as China, Taiwan, and Thailand, with a competitive edge in the Asian publishing market. At the same time, fiction titles related to visual content, including TV dramas and movies, such as “Winter Sonata,” “Autumn in My Heart,” and “Jewel in the Palace,” have been exported to Japan, China, and Taiwan, marking the beginning of the export of Korean literature.

 

 

Then, from 2005, Korean literature began to enter the Anglo-American and European publishing markets in earnest, starting with Kim Young-Ha’s I Have the Right to Destroy Myself (Bokbok Seoga). Then, from 2010 onward, Korean literature, represented by Shin Kyung-Sook’s Please Look After Mom (Changbi Publishers) and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (Changbi Publishers), began to win prestigious literary awards in the Anglo-American and European publishing markets, maximizing its potential in the publishing industry while communicating with global readers. With this trend expanding to areas other than literature, Korean-published works have secured worldwide competitiveness and have advanced to the center of the international publishing market.

 

 

The fact that publishers within a country’s publishing market are able to plan and produce their own content in a variety of fields has many important implications. First and foremost, Korean publishing has reached a stage where it is able to produce titles that are competitive in the Korean market on its own, with the ability to cultivate the knowledge and education of its own readers. This means that Korea has become less dependent on other countries’ knowledge and cultural content, and as a result, the level of Korean knowledge and cultural content production has grown to be globally competitive. The second important implication is that Korea’s globally competitive cultural publications have entered a stage where they can be translated and published in various language regions overseas. This means that Korea has acquired the “content power” to plan, develop, and produce content with a unique character that only Korean authors can write or only Korean publishers can publish. The third important implication, which is directly related to the previous point, is that Korea is entering a phase where it may become less dependent on importing Korean translation rights from other countries such as the US and Europe.
However, self-sufficiency in knowledge and cultural contents is not always desirable. Even if a country’s publishing market has reached a stage where a group of authors with diverse abilities and qualities has been formed, and they have published rich content to satisfy local readers, it is only unfortunate for readers if published content produced in other languages and cultures is not translated and published as they cross over. In the global publishing market, there are many titles with unique identities and voices that address universal thoughts, as well as knowledge and cultural content based on new research and sharp insights. However, if they are not imported, translated, and published, readers in that particular area will not be able to experience such excellent content, and will therefore miss out on new experiences of knowledge and culture. As such, the export, import, and translation of cultural publishing content between countries or language regions is very important. In the end, communication and exchange through published works are necessary values for bridging the gap in knowledge and culture between countries and languages, and for creating and maintaining a “global community” through understanding and respect for each other’s’ “differences.”

 

Compelling content transcends environment

 

Korea is currently going through a period of high exchange rates. As mentioned in the beginning, this is definitely a burden for publishers who pay the advance in dollars. It is therefore understandable that publishers who plan to import titles from overseas publishing markets and translate and publish them in Korea will choose carefully when selecting the titles, and will try to negotiate a contract that reduces the size of the advance in dollars as much as possible. For publishers that bring in translation rights, the burden of paying translators for translations, in addition to the high dollar cost, makes it even more burdensome to import foreign books. This could be read as a sign that the popularity of translated books in the Korean publishing market is on the decline. But, is the popularity of translated books really dropping in the Korean publishing market? Well, it’s hard for anyone to say for sure, because a phenomenon is caused by a combination of reasons and backgrounds over a period of time. However, a few things can be attributed to this phenomenon.
One of the reasons for the shrinking size of the translated foreign book market in the Korean publishing industry is that publishers’ strategies to survive in the weak domestic publishing market are shifting toward planning and publishing titles written by Korean authors rather than translating and publishing foreign books imported from abroad. In doing so, they are trying to expand the market area for publishing, distribution, and sales to the global stage by exporting the translation rights of their titles in various languages. One reason for this is that in the era of high exchange rates, they will not have to pay expensive dollars for foreign titles, nor will they have to pay translation fees, which can be a burden, but they will be able to turn the high exchange rate into an advantage by earning foreign currency by exporting translation rights to various foreign language regions. Another reason is that, as mentioned earlier, Korean authors’ writing capabilities in various publishing genres and their influence in the publishing market have increased compared to the past. Consequently, this environment is leading to the diversification of Korean cultural and publishing content as well as the expansion of their competitiveness in the global publishing market.
The good news is that, despite the potential for the market for translated titles to shrink in an era of high exchange rates, as of the end of March 2025, the overall bestseller lists of online bookstores such as Kyobo Book Centre and Yes24 included a wide range of translated titles, from fiction and non-fiction to comic books, in the upper ranks. Some of those titles include Ethan Mollick’s Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With AI, Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus, Ryunosuke Koike’s The Buddha’s Voice Reinterpreted in Modern Words, and John Williams’ Stoner, all of which are currently popular with Korean readers. This is both an achievement of these titles’ market competitiveness in Korean bookstores and a reminder that Korean readers still have a steady appetite for good foreign books. Ultimately, it shows that titles with strong competitiveness, whether in Korea or in the global publishing market, remain within the realm of interest for readers in any market environment, whether they are written by native authors or are translated titles.

 

 

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Written by Joseph Lee (President of KL Management)