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| Poster for the 2018 Seoul International Book Fair |
By Yun Suh-young
"New Definition" will be the theme of this year's Seoul International Book Fair (SIBF) to be held June 20 to 24 at COEX in Samseong-dong, southern Seoul.
The annual book fair organized by the Korean Publishers Association marks its 24th anniversary this year, since the event officially became an "international" book fair in 1995 with the approval of the International Publishers Association. The predecessor to the SIBF was Seoul Book Fair started in 1991 and Book Fair started 1954.
This year's edition will invite 234 publishing companies from Korea and 91 foreign publishers from 32 countries including the main Guest of Honor Czech Republic which celebrates its 100th anniversary since establishing Czechoslovakia in 1918.
"We expect about twice the number of last year's visitors at 100,000. This year's registration for booths exceeded the limit so we had to cut the admission to only publishers," Joo Iroo, executive director at the Korean Publishers Association, said during a press conference, Monday.
Whereas the theme was "Transformation" last year, this year the organizers wanted to expand the festival and create a new paradigm _ hence the theme "New Definition."
"We wanted to expand the genre of publications to not only books but also other media formats such as digital and audio _ content using sight and sound. In an age where we're losing a lot of readers, we wanted to attract readers back to books through derivative content. We started with the keyword expansion," Joo said.
"We want to build this festival as the largest and most delightful book event in the country. It's a comprehensive cultural festival spanning across extended media and content. Although we're still small internationally, we hope to become one of the four major international book fairs and the main book fair in Asia."
The four major international book fairs are in London, Frankfurt, Bologna and Beijing. SIBF's goal is to replace Beijing as Asia's representative event.
"The reason why the Beijing International Book Fair is the largest in Asia is because of the market size of China. But in fact, it's more of a Westerners' book fair based in Beijing. Since the publishing market is expanding in Asia, we have high hopes SIBF will grow," Joo said.
The representative faces of the festival this year are author Bae Su-ah, actor Jang Dong-gun, and robot Diana who skied during the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. According to Joo, robot Diana was included to represent a new form of intelligence and demonstrate how new tools will transform the publishing industry.
The fair will host a variety of events from new publication announcements by 10 authors, a "reading clinic" where authors "diagnose" books for readers who have pre-requested the service, and conferences on topics such as independent digital publications, audio books, light novels, expansion of media, evolution of bookstores and the importance of leaving a record under the bigger theme of "Books, Humans, and Future."
Visit sibf.or.kr for more information.
