Korea’s printing complex bustles after Han Kang’s Nobel Prize win

On the 13th, at a printing factory located in Paju City, Gyeonggi Province, Han Kang’s novel ‘I Do Not Bid Farewell’, the work of the Nobel Prize in Literature winner, is being printed and bound. (Han Joo-hyung)

South Korea’s publishing and printing district in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, is buzzing with excitement due to the Nobel Prize frenzy after Korean novelist Han Kang won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature last week.

“We don’t even have any paper left,” said Cheon Dae-geun, a manager at a printing factory at the Paju Publishing Complex. “We are using more expensive paper to run the printing presses.”

The factory switched to emergency overtime work as soon as Han’s Nobel Prize win was announced. All its 10 employees came to work on Sunday morning to print and bind Han’s latest work, “I Do Not Bid Farewell.”

“In just two days, we printed 50,000 copies in the 23rd and 25th editions, and we’re now running the 27th edition for 25,000 more copies,” Cheon said.

He noted that “it’s almost unheard of to run the presses at full capacity 24 hours a day over the weekend.”

It is normally rare to print even 5,000 copies for a first edition, so printing 25,000 copies at once is unprecedented, according to the manager.

Hanyoung Publishing & Binding also received an order for 75,000 copies of “I Do Not Bid Farewell” from Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.

“It’s the first time that we’ve had such a huge volume of orders in such a short time,” said Um Jae-geun, a manager at Hanyoung Publishing. “We occasionally worked on Saturdays, but Sunday shifts are very rare.”

Munhakdongne will wrap the newly printed books with a banner reading “Korea’s First Nobel Literature Prize Winner! Han Kang’s Latest Work” and distribute them to bookstores starting on Monday.

As Han’s books continue to sell out, prices of her works are skyrocketing in online second-hand markets.

On Naver‘s Joonggonara, a copy of “Human Acts” was sold for 200,000 won ($148) and an author-signed copy of the 2007 first edition of “The Vegetarian” was listed for a whopping 5 million won on Aladin’s second-hand bookstore.