The 2026 K-Book Copyright Market, held at the Lotte Hotel World in Seoul’s Songpa district, brought together 100 overseas publishing companies from 31 countries for roughly 1,850 individual rights meetings with domestic Korean publishers, one of the largest gatherings yet for an event designed to accelerate international licensing of Korean books.
The market functions as a direct counterpart to the growing translation-support infrastructure Korea’s government has built in recent years: while agencies like the Literature Translation Institute of Korea fund the sample translations and synopses that make Korean books legible to foreign editors, the Copyright Market provides the face-to-face venue where those materials actually turn into signed licensing deals for foreign-language editions.
The scale of participation, more than 100 international publishing houses actively seeking Korean titles, reflects a marked shift from a decade ago, when Korean publishers more often had to actively pitch their catalogs abroad rather than field inbound interest from foreign buyers. Industry observers attribute the shift partly to the broader global visibility Korean culture has gained through K-pop, K-drama and, especially following Han Kang’s 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, Korean fiction specifically.
For Korean publishers, the volume of meetings generated by a single event, nearly 1,850 individual rights discussions, illustrates how quickly the machinery around Korean literary exports has scaled up to meet what publishing officials describe as sustained rather than momentary international demand.
Source: Herald Business (헤럴드경제), “‘K-Books’ Head Overseas: Publishers From 31 Countries Come to Korea,” 2026.
