VOL.84/2025.07

 

60th Anniversary of Diplomatic Relations between
Korea and Japan: Today and Tomorrow of the Publishing Trade

 

2025.06.02

 

This year marks the 80th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese occupation (1910-1945) and the 60th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between the two countries since 1965, when they restored diplomatic relations. In Korea, there is a tradition of celebrating the 60th birthday of a person with great festivity, and the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries is also considered an important milestone. As such, while various commemorative events are taking place, the publishing sector will be organizing Korean book exhibitions, exchanges between Korean and Japanese authors and publishers, and special sales of translated Korean books in Japanese bookstores in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan, under the leadership of the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism and the Publication Industry Promotion Agency of Korea (KPIPA). The idea is to make it an opportunity for Korean books to be promoted in Japan.
Then, what is the current state of publishing trade between Korea and Japan, and what does it look like? The publishing trade can be categorized into the import and export of paper books (original books) and the publication of translated books between the two countries by exporting and importing copyrights; let’s take a look at the flow based on relevant statistics.

 

Korea gains strength in the publications trade, while Japan continues to lead in translated books

 

According to the Japanese Ministry of Finance’s “Trade Statistics,” Japan’s exports of publications (paper books and magazines) to Korea increased from 620.83 million yen in 2019 to 978.852 million yen in 2023 for books, while magazines were similarly up from 315.92 million yen to 373.32 million yen over the same period. In terms of imports, the value of books surged from 765.52 million yen in 2019 to 3,663.31 million yen in 2023, while magazines increased from 43.55 million yen to 297.71 million yen (Publishing Index Yearbook 2024, Japan Publishing Institute). In other words, Korean exports of publications to Japan have increased nearly fivefold in the past five years, while imports of publications from Japan have not changed much; thus, Korea’s trade in publications with Japan has turned from a chronic deficit to a surplus. The value of Korea’s imports and exports of publications to Japan went from a trade deficit of about 1.2 billion won in 2019 to a surplus of about 24.5 billion won in 2023. This indicates a growing interest in Korea from Japanese readers.
Next, if we look at the current state of translated publications by the publishing rights trade between Korea and Japan, we can see that Korea is very active in translating and publishing Japanese books, while Japan’s publication of Korean translations of Japanese books is insignificant. According to the legal deposit copy statistics of the Korean Publishers Association, a total of 4,492 Japanese titles were translated and published in Korea in 2024, accounting for 44% of the total number of translated titles (10,262), mainly led by comics, Japan’s killer content that has a strong influence in the global publishing market. The gap between the second place, US (2,569 titles, 25%), and the third place, UK (733 titles, 7%), is huge. In 2024, Japanese books translated and published in Korea were in the order of comics (2,595 titles), literature (680 titles), and children’s books (323 titles).
A total of 107,776 Japanese titles were translated and published in Korea over the 24 years from 2001 to last year, with comics (57.2%), literature (17.6%), and children’s books (6.9%) accounting for the largest share (see 〈Table 1〉, 〈Figure 1〉, and 〈Figure 2〉). According to Kyobo Book Center’s “Cumulative Sales of Fiction Titles Over the Past 10 Years,” released in January 2019, Japanese authors Keigo Higashino and Haruki Murakami ranked first and second in the list, beating out popular Korean authors. So many Japanese books are translated and sold in Korea because of the abundance of excellent Japanese content, geographical proximity, linguistic, cultural, and emotional similarities, and the availability of Japanese translation specialists.

 

 

 

 

If you look at the graph (〈Figure 2〉) of the trend of Japanese books translated into Korean since the turn of the 21st century, the decline in publication volume around 2013 stands out. This was due to the extreme deterioration of Korea-Japan relations. From 2012 to 2015, the conflict in historical perceptions between Korea and Japan regarding Japan’s past illegal acts against humanity and occupation, such as the victims of Japanese military comfort women and forced labor, was at its peak. On the other hand, novels, which account for the majority of Japanese literature after comics, numbered only 31 titles in 1990, but gradually increased to a peak of 1,534 titles in 2017 before showing a clear decline in recent years. This demonstrates the changing demand in the Korean publishing market.
However, there are no accurate statistics on the number of Korean translations published in Japan. We can only observe an increase in recent years through various sources.
▲ In the 1996 survey by the Korea Arts & Culture Education Service (KACES), 438 Korean literary titles had been published in 16 languages in 27 countries by then (50 Years of the Korean Publishers Association, Korean Publishers Association, 1998). Of these, 123 were in English, 83 in Japanese, 70 in French, and 41 in German.
▲ A total of 5,525 exported titles over the past 30 years have been listed in the “Publishing Copyright Export DB (1978-2008),” which was established as a web database on the Korean Publishers Association website in 2009 by the Korea Publishing Research Institute with research support from the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism. The exported titles were mainly children’s books and comics, and were mainly exported to Asian countries. A total of 437 titles were exported to Japan, including 138 in literature, 59 in children’s books, 58 in language, 52 in comics, 45 in social sciences, 21 in art, 21 in history, 17 in general works, 16 in science and technology, 5 in pure science (natural sciences), 3 in philosophy, and 2 in religion.
▲ According to the Literature Translation Institute of Korea’s (LTI) 2024 Annual Report, the organization supported 359 Japanese translations of Korean literature and content (227 novels, 64 humanities and social science books, and 27 poetry books) and 290 Korean translations of Japanese books (189 novels, 46 humanities and social science books, and 24 poetry books) from 2001 to 2024.
▲ According to the “2023 Publishing Industry Status Survey” conducted by the Publication Industry Promotion Agency of Korea (KPIPA with the participation of copyright agencies and publishers, the annual number of publishing copyrights exported by Korea to Japan was 56 in 2020, 70 in 2021, and 49 in 2022, totaling 175 over the three years. By field, literature accounted for 102, general works 19, children’s books 18, and art 11.
▲ According to the Japan Publishing Institute (Publishing Index Yearbook 2021), the number of foreign books translated and published in the Japanese publishing market has been declining (6,619 titles in 2004, 4,884 titles in 2019), and the number of foreign literature and fiction titles, the largest share among translations, has also dropped (1,724 titles in 2004, 1,167 titles in 2019). While the number of translations of Anglo-American literature, which accounts for about 80% of the total, continued to decline, the number of translations of Korean literature increased to 7 titles in 2016, 19 titles in 2018, and 26 titles in 2019, although on a smaller scale.
▲ According to a recent survey I conducted on the website of Kinokuniya bookstore in Japan, there were 229 translations of “Korean literature” (see 〈Table 2〉). The number of titles published annually has increased from just one in 2011 to 40 in 2023, with an upward trend since 2018. Of the 18 titles published until 2017, 13 were published by CUON, a publishing house run by a Korean (Kim Seung-Bok).

 

 

Through these sources, it can be observed that the total number of Korean books published in Japan is estimated to be around 100 titles per year, which is significantly lower than the number of Japanese books translated into Korean. This indicates a considerable disparity—at least 20 times more (excluding comics) and up to 40 times more (including comics) Japanese books are translated into Korean compared to Korean books published in Japan. This is the result of pure market logic, the commercial publishing trade. There are people who have tried to close the gap and introduce Korean books to Japan. Some of them include Goryeo Seorim (headed by Park Gwang-Soo), which opened in Tokyo in 1959 as a bookstore specializing in Korean books; the Korean Book Center (headed by Noh Yang-Hwan), which was established in Tokyo in 1974 by Samjungdang, which used to be known as “Samjungdang Bookstore” in the 1970s; and translator Akira Dateno, who spearheaded the Korean-Japanese publishing exchange.
Following behind, CUON, a publishing house specializing in Korean books, founded in Tokyo in 2007 by Kim Seung-Bok, completed the publication of Park Kyung-Ni‘s masterpiece Land (all 20 volumes), which is considered one of the representative works of Korean literature, in 2024, 10 years after signing a contract to publish the Japanese edition. In addition to Korean literature (96 fiction titles, 52 non-fiction titles, and 8 poetry titles), Kim played a pioneering role in establishing the foundation of the Korean publishing wave by introducing a variety of good Korean books to Japan, covering humanities, picture books/children’s books, comics, and lifestyle books. In 2015, Kim opened a bookstore specializing in Korean books, “Bookstreet (Chaekgeori),” which has since become a fixture in Tokyo’s Jinbocho, the world-famous book district. Furthermore, the K-Book Promotion Association (established in 2011), an incorporated organization involving Korean literature enthusiasts and Japanese publishers, serves as a strong base for promoting Korean books by disseminating information and holding various events to revitalize the translation and publication of Korean books in Japan.

 

 

Hallyue (Korean Wave) in the Japanese publishing market and the challenges of the global publishing market

 

While the hallyue hype in pop culture, such as dramas, movies, and K-pop, has been going on in Japan for over 20 years, it has only been relatively recently that Korean literature and Korean books have started to gain popularity with general Japanese readers. This is a dramatic turnaround from the prevalence of anti-Korean publications.
The so-called “anti-Korean publishing business” persisted from the late 1980s to the early 2020s, as inflammatory publications with hateful and offensive content about Korea and Koreans made money off far-right audiences in Japan. The phenomenon was fueled by the right-wing’s biased view of Korea’s rapid international growth after the 1988 Seoul Olympics and Japan’s relative stagnation. In November 2014, an exhibition of anti-Korean publications was held in the lobby of the National Assembly Library in Korea, organized by Choi Jae-Cheon, then a member of the Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee of the National Assembly, and the Korean Residents Union in Japan (Mindan). Serious insults to Korea, Koreans, and the head of state were displayed, but in the name of “freedom of publication,” there was no self-correction effort by the Japanese publishing industry, nor was there a clear demand for correction from the Korean government.
All the translated publications are driven by the willingness of the destination language to import, not the willingness of the source language to export. One of the things that the history of the Korean-Japanese publishing trade and the history of publishing in the world has taught us is that content that becomes a hot topic in its home market is likely to be noticed in foreign markets. This is evidenced by the cases where content that resonates strongly with Korean readers has also done well in Japan.
Since the 2000s, the things that have symbolized the publishing hallyue in Japan have been Mirae-N I-Seum’s science education comics series, Surviving (Survival in Japan). Published by Asahi Shimbun in Japan since 2008, it has sold more than 15 million copies to date and has been adapted into a television anime. In the literary field, Cho Nam-Joo’s Kim Jiyoung Born 1982 (Minumsa Publishing) resonated with Japanese female readers, sparking a surge of interest in Korean fiction and feminism.
In addition, Kim Su-Hyun’s essay I Decided to Live as Me (Clay House), which was said to have been read by BTS member Jungkook, garnered significant attention. In addition, Sohn Won-Pyung’s Almond (Darjeeling Books)(2020) and Counterattack at Thirty (EunHaeng NaMu Publishing)(2022), as well as Hwang Bo-Reum’s Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop (Clay House)(2024), won the first place in the translated fiction category in the Japan Booksellers’ Award, which is known to have greater sales power than traditional literary awards in Japan. In 2024, Han Kang’s winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature catapulted Korean literature into the spotlight of Japanese publishers and readers alike. Moreover, Korean webtoon content is sweeping the Japanese webtoon market, creating a solid foundation for the hallyue of Korean content in the Japanese cultural market.

 

 

Looking back at the 60-year history of publishing trade since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and Korea, we can see that while Japanese publishing was the benchmark model for Korean publishing in the early years, Korea’s rapid economic growth and revitalization since the 2000s has created an entirely new environment in which Korean cultural content and the unique appeal of Korean books have become known and spread in Japan. With a surge in preference for Korean books in Japan and an increase in the number of Korean book translators, there is great potential for future growth of the publishing hallyue. Good books transcend language boundaries. In what can now be called the “East Asian publishing community,” the flourishing translation and publishing industry in Korea, Japan, China, and Taiwan is creating a unique dynamism in the world. I hope that the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan will be a chance for the Korean and Japanese publishing industries to explore ways to contribute to the development of global publishing culture together through further exchanges and cooperation networks.

 

 

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Written by Baek Won-Keun (President of Books & Society Research Institute)