VOL.99/2026.10

Knowledge

 

Programs Supporting Korean Books Abroad,

with a Focus on Translation Support

 

 

2026.09

 

 

Connecting K-Books to the World Through Translation and Export Support

 

Kim Soi, Assistant Manager, Publication Industry Promotion Agency of Korea (KPIPA)

 

The Publication Industry Promotion Agency of Korea (KPIPA) supports the growth of the domestic publishing industry and helps build a reading ecosystem. Its mission is to build a publishing and reading ecosystem that grows together, and its vision is to be an institution that enriches people's lives through reading and leads the cultural industry through publishing. As K-culture spreads and overseas demand for Korean publishing content shows clear growth, the Agency has set “creating future growth engines for K-Books” as one of its four strategic goals, putting its resources and effort into securing global competitiveness for K-Books and stimulating exports. Behind this strategy lies the judgment that the ability to get content to market matters as much as the competitiveness of the content itself.

 

To bring Korean content directly to overseas markets, the Agency runs three programs. The first is the K-Book Copyright Market, held in Seoul each year, where B2B export consultations arrange one-on-one rights and IP matching between Korean and foreign publishers, with side events such as networking receptions and IR pitching sessions to improve how often deals actually close. The second is the Traveling Book Fair, which extends that market to overseas locations. This year it supports one-on-one business matching between Korean publishers and foreign buyers across four events, in Vietnam and Thailand, Taiwan, New York, and Milan. The third is participation in international book fairs, supporting publishers and books submitted for display at four fairs this year, the London Book Fair, the Bologna Children's Book Fair, the Frankfurt Book Fair, and the Shanghai International Children's Book Fair. By operating export consultation booths at these fairs, the program promotes exports of Korean publishing content and builds the capacity of authors and publishers. Taken together, the Agency's various forms of support for overseas expansion function less as one-off events than as standing infrastructure.

 

Translation serves as the crucial link when Korean works are presented to foreign buyers and deals get made. For publishers, though, translation is a heavy expense. Recognizing exactly this need, the Agency runs two main translation support programs. The first, the Export Promotional Materials Support Program, covers translation costs for promotional materials, or samples, containing bibliographic information, introductions to the author and the work, and excerpts from the book. It is open to Korean publishers and agencies looking to enter overseas markets. Each selected company can receive support for up to fifteen items per year, with actual costs covered up to two million won per item, allowing for translation of up to 20,000 characters in the Korean original. The program runs six to eight times a year, and applications are accepted through the Agency's K-Book platform (k-book.or.kr). The second, the Web Novel Translation Cost Support Program, selects roughly forty companies each year from among Korean publishers and platform companies that hold web novel titles, providing up to fifteen million won per company toward translation costs. With web novel exports through overseas platforms growing rapidly, this program is a quick response to a growing market.

 

 

This year, the Agency has launched the K-Book Global 100 Project, which consolidates its existing support programs into one continuous process. Designed for the K-culture era, it offers one-stop support for taking publishing content abroad. Rights holders, whether for books or authors, and agencies respond to an open call, and after review, project proposals made up of two to five titles are selected regardless of genre. Support proceeds in three stages. The first is promotional support, covering the translation and production of materials such as samples, portfolios, and synopses. The second is export marketing support, which reimburses costs incurred in offline B2B activities such as participation in international book fairs and content markets. The third is publication and promotion support, which backs publication and promotional efforts by overseas publishers to accelerate local release and generate demand. In redesigning support that had been scattered across separate programs so that it now spans the entire process from translation to overseas publication, this project can be seen as taking the Agency's existing support system one step further.

 

If the K-Book Copyright Market, the Traveling Book Fair, and participation in international book fairs work to increase the points of contact between Korean content and overseas markets, the translation support programs are the mechanism that turns those contacts into actual publication. The K-Book Global 100 Project, which brings both functions onto a single track, follows the same logic. The Nobel laureate José Saramago once said, “Writers make national literature, while translators make universal literature.” An author's story is bound into a good book by a publisher, and sending that book out onto the world stage ultimately falls to translators and to the support systems that make good translation possible. The Agency will continue to serve as one pillar of that system.

 

 

 

 

How Korean Literature Reaches the World’s Shelves

 

Park Chanwoo, Senior Manager, Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI)

 

Last month, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea) released figures on overseas sales of Korean literary works that received translation and publication support over the past five years, from 2021 to 2025. Roughly a thousand supported titles published across more than forty language markets have sold about 3.58 million copies abroad in total, with annual sales alone reaching around 1.2 million copies for two consecutive years. LTI Korea attributes these results not to a few talked-about titles or a spike in sales after an award, but to readerships that have built up steadily across many language markets. The best-selling title last year was Hwang Bo-reum's Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, which sold 70,000 copies in the Turkish edition alone and roughly 230,000 copies across six countries over three years.

 

Yet an increase in readers seeking out Korean literature abroad doesn't mean a Korean book simply finds its way onto foreign shelves. From the moment an overseas publisher sees potential in a work to the point of actual publication, that work must pass through several stages, including rights negotiations, translation, editing, and production. Translation fees and publishing costs in particular become real barriers that give publishers pause before they commit. LTI Korea's Translation and Publication Grants for Overseas Publishers is the program that carries Korean literary works through this process to actual publication abroad.

 

Founded in 1996, LTI Korea is a public institution that has spent the past thirty years supporting the entire process of bringing Korean literature abroad, through translation and publication grants, international exchange, and translator training. Among its programs, the Translation and Publication Grants for Overseas Publishers is significant because it supports the publication stage, where Korean literature actually becomes a book and reaches readers abroad. The grants are open to overseas publishers that have acquired rights to Korean literary or humanities and social science titles published as books in Korea and are preparing to translate and publish them. At the time of application, contracts must already be in place with the rights holder, whether the author or a Korean publisher, and with the translator. Applications are submitted through LTI Korea's digital platform, KLWAVE (klwave.or.kr), and are accepted four times a year, at the end of January, April, July, and October.

 

 

The grants are divided into two parts, translation grants and publication grants. Translation grants are set at up to 19 million won depending on the genre and length of the original and the target language, while publication grants of up to 4 million won are awarded separately, varying by language market. Once a publisher submits the final translated manuscript and the cover, the translation grant is paid to the translator according to the agreement, and once the finished book is published and a copy is submitted, the publication grant is paid to the publisher.

 

Selection is handled by an external review committee made up of experts in literature and publishing. Evaluation is divided into three areas, the literary quality of the original work (30 points), the publication plan and its expected impact (40 points), which takes into account promotional strategy and the translator's ability, and strategic priority (30 points), which considers the overseas publisher's capacity, the institute's strategy, and contribution to diversity across countries and language markets. The framework goes beyond simply choosing a good work. It also asks how well that work, once it becomes a book abroad, can actually reach readers. Results are announced on the KLWAVE platform along with the review committee's overall comments.

 

The significance of this program doesn't stop at subsidizing translation and publication costs for a single book. Publishers that receive grants note the support on the copyright page and continue working with LTI Korea after publication, sharing sales figures. Support doesn't end when the book comes out. It carries on as a shared effort to see how that book is reaching readers abroad. In her Nobel lecture, Han Kang described literature as “the power to penetrate beneath the surface, the power to encounter truth and to make it come alive, the power to connect us.” For a story born in one language to reach readers in another, it needs translation and publication to carry it across the distance between the two languages. From the moment a work of Korean literature lands on a shelf in a bookstore somewhere in the world to the moment a reader there opens it for the first time, that distance may be exactly what the Translation and Publication Grants for Overseas Publishers sets out to help close.

 

 

 

 

So it goes

*A variation on a line from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five

Jang Gun-myung, Manager, The Daesan Foundation

 

Kyobo Book Centre is a major bookstore chain in Korea. Like The Daesan Foundation, it has Kyobo Life Insurance as its parent company. Right now, Kyobo's online store is promoting the release of a new essay collection by the novelist Kim Ae-ran. The title is I Wrote That It Was So. As it happens, Kim Ae-ran was the first recipient of the Daesan University Literary Award, which the foundation administers. In 2002, when she won as an undergraduate, the winning work drew a great deal of praise. Even so, few would have been sure at the time that she would become one of Korea's defining writers and move as many readers as she does today. And no one would have predicted that the award, conceived as a one-off event to mark the foundation's tenth anniversary, would continue to this day and produce so many student writers.

 

 

To introduce the 2026 Grants for the Translation, Research and Publication of Korean Literary Works, recently announced by The Daesan Foundation, sixteen works were selected this year. The foundation provides a set amount of funding to the selected translators and publishers. Among this year's recipients is support for an English translation of Lee Seung-u's Songs of the Earth. Lee Seung-u was the first recipient of the Daesan Literary Award, Korea's largest comprehensive literary prize, which the foundation runs. The winning work was The Reverse Side of Life. The year was 1993, when Michael Jordan announced his first retirement. It was also the year Michael Jackson gave his legendary Super Bowl halftime performance. Korea at the time was so caught up in cheering and absorbing the flood of Western culture pouring in that even young children kept up with news about them. While so many people were dazzled by the dizzying onslaught of the Michaels, The Daesan Foundation named Lee Seung-u, a thirty-five-year-old novelist, as the first winner of the Daesan Literary Award, and the following year supported a French translation of The Reverse Side of Life through its translation grant program.

 

 

The Daesan Foundation (daesan means “great mountain”) stays silent on the impact AI technology will have on the literary world. True to its name, it will go on doing what it has always done. It will keep introducing writers like Kim Ae-ran to the world, and keep carrying the work of writers like Lee Seung-u across borders. Whatever changes AI technology brings. Just as it has for the past thirty years. Like a great mountain.

 

 

 

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Written by Soi Kim (Assistant Manager, Global K-Book Team at Korea Publication Industry Promotion Agency)

 

Written by Chanwoo Park (Senior Manager, Translation & Publication Team at Literature Translation Institute of Korea)

 

Written by Jang Gun-myung (The Daesan Foundation)