Han Kang leads Korea's bestseller boom while adult reading rates halve

Nobel laureate Han Kang’s novels top Korea’s bestseller rankings for the past decade, even as the country’s reading rates hit historic lows, according to new data compiled ahead of World Book and Copyright Day. Kyobo Book Centre said Sunday that Han's “The Vegetarian” and “Human Acts” ranked first and second, respectively, in its cumulative bestseller list covering April 17, 2016 to April 16, 2026, across online and offline channels. The period was chosen to mark the 10 years since “The Vegetarian” won the International Booker Prize in May 2016, the first time a Korean-language novel received the award. “The Vegetarian,” first published in Korean in 2007 and translated into English under the same title, gained renewed attention after the prize and went on to spend 12 consecutive weeks at the top of Kyobo’s weekly overall bestseller chart, becoming the chain’s bestselling book of 2016. Han’s 2014 novel “Human Acts,” about the 1980 Gwangju Democratization Movement, saw a surge in sales after the author became the first Korean writer to win the Nobel Prize i

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