By Min Yea-Ji and Lee Jihae



The keyword in Korea in August was Japan.

Bilateral relations between the two neighbors have soured since Japan resorted to economic retaliation in July against the Korean Supreme Court's ruling last year ordering Japanese corporations to pay reparations to Korean victims of forced labor. The ensuing boycott against Japanese products and anti-Japanese sentiment spread like wildfire in Korea.

This trend caused books about Japan such as Anti-Japanese Tribalism to grow popular. This title, however, fueled a lot of controversy as it supports the views of Japanese far-right ultranationalists and was written by non-historians.

Books on Japanese tourism also declined in popularity as the number of Koreans visiting the archipelago plunged. Around the same time last year, such titles were bestsellers at major bookstores in Korea, with certain stores even having up to seven bestsellers on the subject. This summer, however, not a single book on Japanese tourism has ranked among the most popular in Korea.

August is also the peak time when Koreans go on vacation.

More Koreans opted to ease their minds in quiet places during vacation, and this gave rise to neologisms. For instance, spending a vacation reading books is called "book-cance," (a portmanteau derived from the English word "book" and the French word "vacance" for vacation) and spending it at a hotel is called "ho-cance." Popular works among book-cance enthusiasts included The Reasons for Traveling and Travels in European Cities, both written by famous Korean writers who recounted their travel experiences.

Then there are books loved by readers irrespective of the social atmosphere or the season. Death, the new novel by Bernard Werber, a French writer renowned for his Ants trilogy and The Ultimate Secret, became one of Korea's bestselling novels upon its publication in mid-August.

Public interest also soared in "Anne with an E," a series that aired on Netflix from 2017-18, thanks to the drama being based on the novel Anne of Green Gables. The Lucy M. Montgomery work is still a bestseller in Korea despite the passage of more than a century since its debut in 1908.


jesimin@korea.kr