Why it matters. Korea's reading boom shows how fan culture and social-media taste-making — forces the world associates with K-pop and dramas — are now reshaping which books a literate, highly online society buys.
Background. Kyobo Book Centre and Yes24 are Korea's two largest booksellers, and their half-year tallies are closely watched market barometers. Han Kang's 2024 Nobel Prize briefly drove a wave of domestic fiction sales; this year's growth without such a catalyst suggests a more durable shift. 'Text hip' is local slang for the recent trend of young Koreans treating reading as a cool, shareable lifestyle.
What to watch next. Watch whether the fandom-driven momentum holds in the second half of 2026 or fades once the novelty of 'text hip' cools.
South Korean novel sales surged in the first half of 2026, with fiction accounting for one in every 10 domestic books sold and 30 of the 100 best-selling titles — the highest share this century — according to figures released June 8 by Kyobo Book Centre, the country’s largest bookstore chain.
Kyobo said the number of novels sold rose 19.3% from a year earlier, marking a second straight year of double-digit growth. Fiction made up 10.6% of all single-volume domestic book sales and claimed eight of the 10 best-selling titles overall. It is the first time since Kyobo began tracking sales by detailed genre in the 2000s that novels have taken 30 of the top 100 spots.
A More Varied Bestseller List
What stands out this year is not just the volume but the breadth of readers’ choices. The No. 1 title was “Project Hail Mary,” a foreign science-fiction novel that climbed back up the charts after its film adaptation opened in March. The rest of the top 10 was a mix: three domestic novels, two homegrown “healing” novels (gentle, comforting fiction), two foreign titles and one work of classic literature. A separate tally from Yes24, another major Korean online bookseller, found five of its top 10 were novels.
That diversity contrasts with recent years. In 2025, the list was dominated by domestic fiction, including three books by Han Kang, the Korean author who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. Notably, the genre held its peak in 2026 without a comparable headline event. Earlier surges — novels first crossed a quarter of the top 100 in 2022, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic — leaned heavily on healing fiction; this year’s spread is wider.
Fandom and ‘Text Hip’
Industry observers credit the boom to “text hip” — a Korean buzzword for the idea that reading and engaging with text has become fashionable, especially among the young — and to fandom-style marketing. Kyobo argued that in an uncertain social climate, readers are seeking stories that offer comfort and warmth, and that as short, fast video clips become a daily habit, demand has grown for immersive narratives that reward the imagination.
The retailer also pointed to a shift in how books are promoted. Large YouTubers and publishers’ own branded channels have built devoted followings, helping drive sales. Readers in their teens and 20s fueled parallel growth in novels and comics through fandom culture, while those in their 20s and 30s were the only age group whose in-store purchase rate rose year on year.
Winners and One Loser
Publisher Minumsa placed 12 titles from its World Literature series among the top 30 foreign novels, with Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha” reaching No. 6 overall. Not every category shared in the gains: poetry sales fell 5.9% from a year earlier, despite having previously been linked to the popularity of short-form video.
