At Tongbang book sale, expats find English reads — and new friends

Thousands of bibliophiles perused more than 10,000 titles, all in English, during a massive book sale hosted by the independent English-language retailer Tongbang Books that ran Saturday through Sunday.

Books that Dahlia Davis, 24, picked out for herself at Tongbang Books' Open House book sale in Seongdong District, eastern Seoul, on Saturday [LEE JIAN]

Seongsu-dong, which many call “the Brooklyn of Seoul,” is often thronged with stylish youths posing against vintage store walls and strutting down streets as if they're runways. But a more dressed-down crowd, sporting empty tote bags as opposed to purses, made their way to the city's eastern neighborhood on Saturday for a bit of a more old-fashioned purpose: book shopping.

On a cloudless November afternoon, the decades-old warehouse was marked by the indelible smell of paper and ink. Bibliophiles perused more than 10,000 titles, all in English, throughout the Open House, a massive sale hosted by the independent English-language retailer Tongbang Books that ran Saturday through Sunday.

Many appeared engrossed in their hunt, savoring the massive inventory, which included bestsellers and translated fiction, as well as comics and cookbooks. Time seemed to escape the event's 2,000 customers as they foraged the shelves on hands and knees. Final picks were diverse and singular but usually included at least one translated novel.

Visitor to Tongbang Books' Open House, Vivienne Foley, 64, shares her picks at the event with the Korea JoongAng Daily in Seongdong District, eastern Seoul, on Saturday. [LEE JIAN]

“I don’t think I’ve seen so many English books in one place in South Korea,” said an excited Vivienne Foley, a 64-year-old from Incheon who had stopped by at the sale during a weekend excursion in Seoul.

Foley’s picks on the day included “The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly” (2000) by Hwang Sun-mi, a quirky novel about a rebellious hen who devises a plan to obtain freedom and independence outside the barn, and “The Trunk” by Kim Ryeo-ryeong, a feminist thriller set to be released as a Netflix series later this month starring bigtime stars like Gong Yoo and Seo Hyeon-jin. She had also selected several books for her nephew from the sale’s sizable children's section.

Twenty-three-year-old Jacqueline Becerra, a champion of hard copies over e-books, attended the event to experience the physical act of book shopping, an opportunity she finds is becoming rarer as time goes on. “Online bookshops and e-books have cool features, but the feeling of holding and flipping through an actual book is a different thing,” she said.

Becerra was one of hundreds of thousands of readers around the world who have clamored to obtain the works of Han Kang after the Korean novelist received the Nobel Prize in literature last month. Fortunately, Becerra is on the waiting list for “The Vegetarian” (2007) at a nearby library. “So I'm, like, holding on,” said the shopper, who instead opted to purchase classics like Toni Morrison's “The Bluest Eye” (1970) and Mieko Kawakami's “All The Lovers In The Night” (2011) that afternoon.

Titles by Nobel Prize winning author, Han Kang, at Tongbang Books' Open House sale [LEE JIAN]

Running an independent bookstore — in English, no less —is no easy feat in Korea's market. Forty-four closed in 2022, per the latest data from the Korea Federation of Bookstore Association. The Korean government had named six regions “bookstore extinction areas,” as of the Korea Publication Industry Promotion Agency’s biannual report released in 2022.

Tongbang Books, founded in 1985, has been in its current location since 2010 when Seongsu-dong was an industrial neighborhood. Like almost all other major book dealers, it considered relocating to the much cheaper area of Paju, Gyeonggi.

That, though, would be a shame for customers like Foley and Becerra — because Tonbang's Seoul location helps it provide accessible events like the Open House for English-speaking readers.

Korea's publishing market is, naturally, dominated by franchises that primarily provide Korean-language books. For a growing number of foreign residents — currently numbering a record high of 2.46 million, or 4.8 percent of the country's population— that can be frustrating.

A view of the warehouse during Tongbang Books' Open House sale in Seongdong District, eastern Seoul. The event ran through Sunday.[LEE JIAN]

Tongbang has, since its 1985 founding, traditionally targeted Korean families with young children studying English. But it ventured into additional categories after seeing a surge of international adult customers after the Covid-19 pandemic. Most recently, it revamped its second website, dbBOOKS.co.kr, to be more foreigner-friendly, with menus and alerts posted in English and support for overseas credit cards.

Foley and Becerra agreed that major Korean bookstore franchises like Kyobo Book Centre and Aladdin don’t have a large enough section for English books.

Emma-rae Ranger, 28, a grade school science teacher and a fiction lover, was happy that she could pick out books for her classroom as well as personal reads like Lauren Roberts's romance fantasy “Reckless” at the Open House.

“This way,” Ms. Foley said, “I get to spend my weekend afternoon actually feeling the books, browsing through the pages and discovering something new.”

Cookbooks at Tongbang Book's Open House sale in Seongdong District, eastern Seoul, on Saturday. [LEE JIAN]

For Dahlia Davis, 24, who arrived in Korea just a few months ago, the warehouse sale was a way to find not only new books, but also a sense of community in the busy metropolis of Seoul. “I don’t get many chances to meet so many new foreigners in Korea,” she said. “It’s been nice to start conversations with them.”

Davis’s picks included Kang Kyeong-ae's “The Underground Village” (1936), a collection of short stories depicting the lives of ethnic Koreans in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945). She also selected staple historical fiction like Han Kang's “Human Acts” (2014), inspired by the tragedies of the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement, and Lee Min-jin's “Pachinko” (2017), which also deals with the lives of Koreans during Japanese rule.

“I did a research project during my undergrad in Japanese occupation, and that was really what got me [interested] in Korea,” Davis said.

One of the books that Alyona Koneva, 28, picked was “How We Learn: The New Science and the Brain” (2020) by French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene. “I used to really like fiction, but I think I read too much [of it], so now, I’m trying to shift my interest to nonfiction books as well," she said. [LEE JIAN]

Foreigners accounted for more than half Saturday’s attendees, according to Hahm Ki-hyun, Tongbang's senior director of operations.

“We were blessed with an amazing turnout,” Hahm told the Korea JoongAng Daily, adding that the Saturday had set a single-day record for the total number of items sold. Hahm said he is looking to make the Open House a biannual event, with the next iteration slated to take place in May 2025. As the late afternoon crowd poured in, Alyona Koneva, 28, was in line for checkout, holding a basket stacked with books. Her proudest pick of the day’s hunt was “How We Learn: The New Science and the Brain” (2020) by French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene. “I used to really like fiction, but I think I read too much [of it], so now, I’m trying to shift my interest to nonfiction books as well.”

When asked how long she’d been at the event, she looked at her phone and replied, wide-eyed, “One hour and a half already!” Then, with a sheepish chuckle, she added, “I lost track of time, I guess.”

BY LEE JIAN [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]