{"id":77991,"date":"2025-09-22T01:57:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T01:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/77991\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T01:57:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T01:57:12","slug":"why-koreans-keep-buying-books-they-admit-are-shallow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/77991\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Koreans keep buying books they admit are shallow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paying for ‘healing essay’ in Korea is less about reading than buying feeling you’re caring for yourself properly<\/p>\n

\"Customers Customers browse the \u201cEssay Best\u201d section at Kyobo Book Center in Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, Wednesday. (Moon Joon-hyun\/The Korea Herald) <\/p>\n

When “I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki” appeared in 2018, it opened up something rare in Korean publishing. Part memoir, part therapeutic dialogue, the book was grounded in the author\u2019s experience of clinical depression. Classified as a \u201cKorean Essay\u201d by local bookstores, it stood out because it offered a vulnerable personal narrative.<\/p>\n

Seven years on, the same category looks very different. Bookstores across South Korea showcase row after row of pastel-colored volumes repeating variations of the same lines:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are enough just by existing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven standing still is moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHappiness lives in ordinary days.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are what the industry loosely calls \u201chealing essays.\u201d They are short, comprising brief paragraphs or fragments and designed for quick skimming. Unlike memoirs anchored in life experience, they function less as narratives and more as collections of quotable phrases.<\/p>\n

And they sell.<\/p>\n

In the monthly bestseller charts of Korea\u2019s largest bookstore chains \u2014 Kyobo Book Center, Yes24 and Aladin \u2014 at least two or three of the top 10 titles are now these healing essays. According to Yes24\u2019s annual report, more than 4,200 essay titles were released in 2023, almost double the figure a decade earlier. Unit sales in the \u201cKorean Essay\u201d category have grown by more than 30 percent since 2019, while other categories such as nonfiction and translated literature have stagnated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the safest bet for publishers,\u201d said a senior editor at a major local publishing house, speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t need characters, research or story. What matters is whether a sentence looks good underlined with a highlighter. Marketing teams literally ask, \u2018Can this be photographed for Instagram?\u2019 That is the bar now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buying validation in culture of exhaustion<\/p>\n

For readers, the appeal is rarely about literary quality. It is about what the act of buying the bound tome symbolizes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t expect them to change my life,\u201d said Ham, a 34-year-old pharmacist who has bought a few those essays. \u201cI know the words are vague. But when I buy one, it feels like I gave myself permission to rest. Even if I only read a few pages, I own the gesture. That feels important.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Bestseller Bestseller shelves at Kyobo Book Center in Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, display the latest popular essay titles on Wednesday. (Moon Joon-hyun\/The Korea Herald) <\/p>\n

That gesture does matter in Korea, and buying a book still carries cultural legitimacy.<\/p>\n

As sociologist Lee Jung-yeon of Seoul Women\u2019s University explained, \u201cBooks remain objects of seriousness in Korea. So when people pay about 16,000 won ($11.50) for an essay book, they are not just buying sentences. They are buying the right to tell themselves: \u2018I am caring for myself in a respectable way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

This helps explain why readers may not feel deceived even when they recognize a lack of substance. The trade is conscious. They know the pages contain platitudes, but the purchase itself \u2014 just expensive enough to feel weighty \u2014 delivers a socially sanctioned form of self-care.<\/p>\n

Psychologists see both benefit and risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people are under extreme stress, they don\u2019t necessarily want rigorous analysis,\u201d said Lee Dong-gwi, a professor of clinical psychology at Yonsei University. \u201cThey want words that can be absorbed in one glance, almost like mantras. That can reduce a sense of isolation. But quick comfort should not be confused with genuine recovery. The danger is when people expect these lines to serve as therapy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all readers are forgiving.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re like fast food for the mind,\u201d said Yoon, a 26-year-old graduate student in European literature at Kyung Hee University. \u201cEasy to swallow, instantly gratifying, marketed as nourishing even when they\u2019re mostly empty calories. I don\u2019t blame people for reaching for them, but I wonder what it means if this becomes our main diet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Publishers acknowledge this demand openly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the easiest genre to scale,\u201d the anonymous editor added. \u201cOne influencer with 200,000 Instagram followers can be turned into an author in months. The book itself doesn\u2019t need depth. Their audience supplies the market.\u201d<\/p>\n

mjh@heraldcorp.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paying for ‘healing essay’ in Korea is less about reading than buying feeling you’re caring for yourself properly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[5402,359,18,117,19,17,5403,5399,5398,5404,5400,5401,5397,5406,5407,5405],"class_list":{"0":"post-77991","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-asia-news","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-k-pop","15":"tag-koreaherald","16":"tag-korean-news","17":"tag-kpop","18":"tag-south-korea-news","19":"tag-south-korea-news-in-english","20":"tag-the-korea-herald","21":"tag-5406","22":"tag-5407","23":"tag-5405"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}