{"id":51410,"topic":"ai","source":"Japan Wire by Kyodo News","title":"FEATURE: S. Korea's biggest AI users are also driving reading boom - Japan Wire by Kyodo News","url":"https://english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/81040","url_hash":"ce0f0cb161b9eac1e371c24988cbf49892614e07","author":"","summary":"FEATURE: S. Korea's biggest AI users are also driving reading boom Japan Wire by Kyodo News","content":"SEOUL - South Koreans in their 20s and 30s, the country's most avid users of artificial intelligence, are also driving a reading renaissance that is reshaping the domestic publishing market.\nThe share of South Korean adults who read at least one book a year, whether in print, digital or audio format, has steadily declined for more than a decade, falling from 72.2 percent in 2013 to 38.5 percent in 2025, according to the culture ministry's 2025 National Reading Survey.\nYoung adults, however, appear to be going against the trend as they maintain the highest reading participation among adults.\nThe reading rate among people in their 20s stood at 75.3 percent and among those in their 30s at 66.4 percent, while a separate government survey by the science ministry on internet usage found that the same age groups also had the highest rates of generative AI use, at 75.3 percent and 71.1 percent, respectively.\nTheir enthusiasm was on full display at the Seoul International Book Fair, held at the COEX convention center in late June, with lines snaking around the venue before the doors opened at 10 a.m.\nCrowds flocked to booths run by major publishers including Minumsa, while a booth where visitors picked a bookmark and received a matching book recommendation drew one of the longest queues of the day.\nOh Da Young, a 21-year-old university student, stood in a long checkout line at the Minumsa booth holding an armful of thick literary classics.\nShe said she read 24 books last year, ten times the national adult average, and has set an even higher goal for this year, driven in part by a small reading circle with two friends, where they swap books and share reviews.\n\"I became interested in books because the people around me like reading,\" Oh said, adding that she prefers physical books to electronic ones, noting that \"when you actually buy a book with your own money, you really feel like you own it.\"\nMinumsa has emerged as a standout example of the trend, with revenue surging 23.8 percent in 2025 even as the overall trade book market shrank 6.9 percent, pushing it from 11th to eighth place among major publishers, according to the Korean Publishers Association's annual market report.\nThe publisher has cultivated a loyal group of younger fans in part through its popular YouTube channel, where editors discuss literature and recommend titles in a casual, accessible style.\nThe book fair itself has seen its attendance surge from around 100,000 visitors in 2022 and 2023 to some 160,000 this year, according to the fair's operations office.\nSocial media has helped fuel the trend, with the rise of \"text-hip\" -- the idea that reading is cool -- encouraging young people to share their reading habits online and turning books into markers of cultural identity. Many visitors at the fair could be seen taking photos at publisher booths.\nLee Moon Ju, 37, said she occasionally posts favorite passages from the books she read on social media, saying she does so simply for her own satisfaction.\nPark Ji Yong, a 34-year-old visiting the book fair for the first time, said a desire for personal growth led him to pick up books a few years ago -- a motivation that reflects the reading survey, in which \"self-improvement\" ranked as the second most common reason adults gave for reading, after \"enjoyment.\"\nHe now reads up to 10 books a semester while attending university.\nPark, who also uses AI tools extensively, described using Google's Gemini to deepen his understanding of literature, for example, by asking it to explain references in Japanese author Haruki Murakami's \"Kafka on the Shore\" and to recommend his next books to read from various genres based on what he had already finished.\n\"I ask things like, 'I just read this book, and this keyword came up -- can you explain it in relation to the story?'\" Park said.\nOh said she logs her reading on an app called Repov and also uses AI for schoolwork.\nNot everyone in the generation welcomes the use of AI, however, with Kim Han Bi, a 21-year-old visiting the fair, saying she avoids the technology because she finds its sources unreliable, preferring to look things up in books and academic papers instead.\n\"I actually think the reading boom is happening because of AI,\" Oh said, offering her own theory. \"People are using AI so much that they're losing time to read and think, and I think they realize they need to go back to reading books to form their own ideas and express themselves.\"","image_url":"https://english-kyodo.ismcdn.jp/mwimgs/7/2/1200x/img_72d1d846f2b0be3a6e0be208f42ab0262667762.jpg","lang":"en","published_at":"2026-08-02T00:15:00+00:00","fetched_at":"2026-08-02T01:15:04+00:00","status":"read","starred":0,"extract_state":"ok","summary_auto":"SEOUL - South Koreans in their 20s and 30s, the country's most avid users of artificial intelligence, are also driving a reading renaissance that is reshaping the domestic publishing market. 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Korea's biggest AI users are also driving reading boom Japan Wire by Kyodo News","full_text":"SEOUL - South Koreans in their 20s and 30s, the country's most avid users of artificial intelligence, are also driving a reading renaissance that is reshaping the domestic publishing market.\nThe share of South Korean adults who read at least one book a year, whether in print, digital or audio format, has steadily declined for more than a decade, falling from 72.2 percent in 2013 to 38.5 percent in 2025, according to the culture ministry's 2025 National Reading Survey.\nYoung adults, however, appear to be going against the trend as they maintain the highest reading participation among adults.\nThe reading rate among people in their 20s stood at 75.3 percent and among those in their 30s at 66.4 percent, while a separate government survey by the science ministry on internet usage found that the same age groups also had the highest rates of generative AI use, at 75.3 percent and 71.1 percent, respectively.\nTheir enthusiasm was on full display at the Seoul International Book Fair, held at the COEX convention center in late June, with lines snaking around the venue before the doors opened at 10 a.m.\nCrowds flocked to booths run by major publishers including Minumsa, while a booth where visitors picked a bookmark and received a matching book recommendation drew one of the longest queues of the day.\nOh Da Young, a 21-year-old university student, stood in a long checkout line at the Minumsa booth holding an armful of thick literary classics.\nShe said she read 24 books last year, ten times the national adult average, and has set an even higher goal for this year, driven in part by a small reading circle with two friends, where they swap books and share reviews.\n\"I became interested in books because the people around me like reading,\" Oh said, adding that she prefers physical books to electronic ones, noting that \"when you actually buy a book with your own money, you really feel like you own it.\"\nMinumsa has emerged as a standout example of the trend, with revenue surging 23.8 percent in 2025 even as the overall trade book market shrank 6.9 percent, pushing it from 11th to eighth place among major publishers, according to the Korean Publishers Association's annual market report.\nThe publisher has cultivated a loyal group of younger fans in part through its popular YouTube channel, where editors discuss literature and recommend titles in a casual, accessible style.\nThe book fair itself has seen its attendance surge from around 100,000 visitors in 2022 and 2023 to some 160,000 this year, according to the fair's operations office.\nSocial media has helped fuel the trend, with the rise of \"text-hip\" -- the idea that reading is cool -- encouraging young people to share their reading habits online and turning books into markers of cultural identity. Many visitors at the fair could be seen taking photos at publisher booths.\nLee Moon Ju, 37, said she occasionally posts favorite passages from the books she read on social media, saying she does so simply for her own satisfaction.\nPark Ji Yong, a 34-year-old visiting the book fair for the first time, said a desire for personal growth led him to pick up books a few years ago -- a motivation that reflects the reading survey, in which \"self-improvement\" ranked as the second most common reason adults gave for reading, after \"enjoyment.\"\nHe now reads up to 10 books a semester while attending university.\nPark, who also uses AI tools extensively, described using Google's Gemini to deepen his understanding of literature, for example, by asking it to explain references in Japanese author Haruki Murakami's \"Kafka on the Shore\" and to recommend his next books to read from various genres based on what he had already finished.\n\"I ask things like, 'I just read this book, and this keyword came up -- can you explain it in relation to the story?'\" Park said.\nOh said she logs her reading on an app called Repov and also uses AI for schoolwork.\nNot everyone in the generation welcomes the use of AI, however, with Kim Han Bi, a 21-year-old visiting the fair, saying she avoids the technology because she finds its sources unreliable, preferring to look things up in books and academic papers instead.\n\"I actually think the reading boom is happening because of AI,\" Oh said, offering her own theory. \"People are using AI so much that they're losing time to read and think, and I think they realize they need to go back to reading books to form their own ideas and express themselves.\"","excerpt":"SEOUL - South Koreans in their 20s and 30s, the country's most avid users of artificial intelligence, are also driving a reading renaissance that is reshaping the domestic publishing market. The share of South Korean adults who read at least one book a year, whether in print, digital or audio format, has steadily declined for more than a decade, falling from 72.2 percent in 2013 to 38.5 percent in 2025, according to the culture ministry's 2025 National Reading Survey.","extraction":{"state":"ok","confidence":0.9,"error":null,"explanation":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4461 characters.","diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/81040","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4461 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":4461,"summary_length":472,"usable_text_length":4461,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":4461,"summary_length":472}}},"display_formats":["compact","card","full","digest_section","json"]},"daily_stack_record":{"title":"FEATURE: S. 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Many visitors at the fair could be seen taking photos at publisher booths.\nLee Moon Ju, 37, said she occasionally posts favorite passages from the books she read on social media, saying she does so simply for her own satisfaction.\nPark Ji Yong, a 34-year-old visiting the book fair for the first time, said a desire for personal growth led him to pick up books a few years ago -- a motivation that reflects the reading survey, in which \"self-improvement\" ranked as the second most common reason adults gave for reading, after \"enjoyment.\"\nHe now reads up to 10 books a semester while attending university.\nPark, who also uses AI tools extensively, described using Google's Gemini to deepen his understanding of literature, for example, by asking it to explain references in Japanese author Haruki Murakami's \"Kafka on the Shore\" and to recommend his next books to read from various genres based on what he had already finished.\n\"I ask things like, 'I just read this book, and this keyword came up -- can you explain it in relation to the story?'\" Park said.\nOh said she logs her reading on an app called Repov and also uses AI for schoolwork.\nNot everyone in the generation welcomes the use of AI, however, with Kim Han Bi, a 21-year-old visiting the fair, saying she avoids the technology because she finds its sources unreliable, preferring to look things up in books and academic papers instead.\n\"I actually think the reading boom is happening because of AI,\" Oh said, offering her own theory. \"People are using AI so much that they're losing time to read and think, and I think they realize they need to go back to reading books to form their own ideas and express themselves.\"","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/81040","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4461 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4461 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":4461,"summary_length":472,"usable_text_length":4461,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":4461,"summary_length":472}},"tags":[]},"fallback_formats":["markdown","json","html"],"actions":{"read":"/item/51410","export_markdown":"/api/items/51410/export?format=markdown","export_json":"/api/items/51410/export?format=json","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/81040"},"formats":{"full":{"id":51410,"title":"FEATURE: S. 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Many visitors at the fair could be seen taking photos at publisher booths.\nLee Moon Ju, 37, said she occasionally posts favorite passages from the books she read on social media, saying she does so simply for her own satisfaction.\nPark Ji Yong, a 34-year-old visiting the book fair for the first time, said a desire for personal growth led him to pick up books a few years ago -- a motivation that reflects the reading survey, in which \"self-improvement\" ranked as the second most common reason adults gave for reading, after \"enjoyment.\"\nHe now reads up to 10 books a semester while attending university.\nPark, who also uses AI tools extensively, described using Google's Gemini to deepen his understanding of literature, for example, by asking it to explain references in Japanese author Haruki Murakami's \"Kafka on the Shore\" and to recommend his next books to read from various genres based on what he had already finished.\n\"I ask things like, 'I just read this book, and this keyword came up -- can you explain it in relation to the story?'\" Park said.\nOh said she logs her reading on an app called Repov and also uses AI for schoolwork.\nNot everyone in the generation welcomes the use of AI, however, with Kim Han Bi, a 21-year-old visiting the fair, saying she avoids the technology because she finds its sources unreliable, preferring to look things up in books and academic papers instead.\n\"I actually think the reading boom is happening because of AI,\" Oh said, offering her own theory. \"People are using AI so much that they're losing time to read and think, and I think they realize they need to go back to reading books to form their own ideas and express themselves.\"","reading_time_min":4,"extraction":{"state":"ok","confidence":0.9,"error":null,"explanation":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4461 characters.","diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/81040","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4461 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":4461,"summary_length":472,"usable_text_length":4461,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":4461,"summary_length":472}}},"quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4461 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":4461,"summary_length":472,"usable_text_length":4461,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":4461,"summary_length":472}},"actions":{"read":"/item/51410","export_markdown":"/api/items/51410/export?format=markdown","export_json":"/api/items/51410/export?format=json","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/81040"}},"digest":{"id":51410,"title":"FEATURE: S. 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Korea's biggest AI users are also driving reading boom - Japan Wire by Kyodo News","subtitle":"Japan Wire by Kyodo News · 2026-08-02","summary":"SEOUL - South Koreans in their 20s and 30s, the country's most avid users of artificial intelligence, are also driving a reading renaissance that is reshaping the domestic publishing market. The share of South Korean…","badges":["quality:high"],"links":{"read":"/item/51410","original":"https://english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/81040","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/81040"},"quality_warning":null},"export":{"title":"FEATURE: S. Korea's biggest AI users are also driving reading boom - Japan Wire by Kyodo News","url":"https://english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/81040","summary":"SEOUL - South Koreans in their 20s and 30s, the country's most avid users of artificial intelligence, are also driving a reading renaissance that is reshaping the domestic publishing market. The share of South Korean adults who read at least one book a year, whether in print, digital or audio format, has steadily declined for more than a decade, falling from 72.2 percent in 2013 to 38.5 percent in 2025, according to the culture ministry's 2025 National Reading Survey.","source":"Japan Wire by Kyodo News","date":"2026-08-02T00:15:00+00:00","content":"SEOUL - South Koreans in their 20s and 30s, the country's most avid users of artificial intelligence, are also driving a reading renaissance that is reshaping the domestic publishing market.\nThe share of South Korean adults who read at least one book a year, whether in print, digital or audio format, has steadily declined for more than a decade, falling from 72.2 percent in 2013 to 38.5 percent in 2025, according to the culture ministry's 2025 National Reading Survey.\nYoung adults, however, appear to be going against the trend as they maintain the highest reading participation among adults.\nThe reading rate among people in their 20s stood at 75.3 percent and among those in their 30s at 66.4 percent, while a separate government survey by the science ministry on internet usage found that the same age groups also had the highest rates of generative AI use, at 75.3 percent and 71.1 percent, respectively.\nTheir enthusiasm was on full display at the Seoul International Book Fair, held at the COEX convention center in late June, with lines snaking around the venue before the doors opened at 10 a.m.\nCrowds flocked to booths run by major publishers including Minumsa, while a booth where visitors picked a bookmark and received a matching book recommendation drew one of the longest queues of the day.\nOh Da Young, a 21-year-old university student, stood in a long checkout line at the Minumsa booth holding an armful of thick literary classics.\nShe said she read 24 books last year, ten times the national adult average, and has set an even higher goal for this year, driven in part by a small reading circle with two friends, where they swap books and share reviews.\n\"I became interested in books because the people around me like reading,\" Oh said, adding that she prefers physical books to electronic ones, noting that \"when you actually buy a book with your own money, you really feel like you own it.\"\nMinumsa has emerged as a standout example of the trend, with revenue surging 23.8 percent in 2025 even as the overall trade book market shrank 6.9 percent, pushing it from 11th to eighth place among major publishers, according to the Korean Publishers Association's annual market report.\nThe publisher has cultivated a loyal group of younger fans in part through its popular YouTube channel, where editors discuss literature and recommend titles in a casual, accessible style.\nThe book fair itself has seen its attendance surge from around 100,000 visitors in 2022 and 2023 to some 160,000 this year, according to the fair's operations office.\nSocial media has helped fuel the trend, with the rise of \"text-hip\" -- the idea that reading is cool -- encouraging young people to share their reading habits online and turning books into markers of cultural identity. Many visitors at the fair could be seen taking photos at publisher booths.\nLee Moon Ju, 37, said she occasionally posts favorite passages from the books she read on social media, saying she does so simply for her own satisfaction.\nPark Ji Yong, a 34-year-old visiting the book fair for the first time, said a desire for personal growth led him to pick up books a few years ago -- a motivation that reflects the reading survey, in which \"self-improvement\" ranked as the second most common reason adults gave for reading, after \"enjoyment.\"\nHe now reads up to 10 books a semester while attending university.\nPark, who also uses AI tools extensively, described using Google's Gemini to deepen his understanding of literature, for example, by asking it to explain references in Japanese author Haruki Murakami's \"Kafka on the Shore\" and to recommend his next books to read from various genres based on what he had already finished.\n\"I ask things like, 'I just read this book, and this keyword came up -- can you explain it in relation to the story?'\" Park said.\nOh said she logs her reading on an app called Repov and also uses AI for schoolwork.\nNot everyone in the generation welcomes the use of AI, however, with Kim Han Bi, a 21-year-old visiting the fair, saying she avoids the technology because she finds its sources unreliable, preferring to look things up in books and academic papers instead.\n\"I actually think the reading boom is happening because of AI,\" Oh said, offering her own theory. \"People are using AI so much that they're losing time to read and think, and I think they realize they need to go back to reading books to form their own ideas and express themselves.\"","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/81040","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4461 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 4461 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":4461,"summary_length":472,"usable_text_length":4461,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":4461,"summary_length":472}},"tags":[],"format_contract_version":"news_item_formats.v1"}}}