Sales of the nation's literary works have reached 1.85 million copies over the past five years. Shown is author Chung Bora (Bora Chung) (left), who wrote "Cursed Bunny," and the novel's translator Anton Hur on May 26, 2022, posing with the book at the International Booker Prize ceremony in London. (Yonhap News)

By Kim Seon Ah

A combined 1.85 million copies of the country's literature have been sold abroad over the past five years, according to a study by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea) on such works that it supported from 2018-22.

LTI Korea on Jan. 24 said a combined domestic 776 works were translated into 41 languages over the past five years through the institute's support. Among them, 50 sold at least 5,000 copies each and 27 10,000 copies each.

The list of 10,000 copy sellers included "Cursed Bunny" (English), "Almond" (Japanese), ''Kim Ji-young, Born 1982" (German) and "Please Look After Mom" (Chinese).

Written by Chung Bora, aka Bora Chung, "Cursed Bunny" was shortlisted in 2022 for the International Booker Prize of the U.K. and sold over 20,000 copies that year, a 1,000% jump from its sales in the first six months since its release in July 2021.

Author Sohn Won-pyeong won the Japanese Booksellers' Award in 2020 for "Almond" and in 2022 for "Counterattack at Thirty." Both works each sold 20,000 or more copies two years ago.

Foreign readers are also increasingly drawn to a more diverse Korean genres such as graphic novels, humanities, social studies and essays. The graphic novels "Grass" (English) by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim and "Moms" (English) by Ma Yeong-shin have received many applications for translation support after each won the best international book category of the Harvey Awards of the U.S. 

Among Buddhist healing essays, "The More You Empty Yourself, the More You Have" (French) by the Ven. Jeongmok and Haemin Sunim's "The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down" (German) are steadily gaining popularity.

sofiakim218@korea.kr