The best-selling Korean literature work abroad over the past five years was found to be 'Kim Ji-young, Born 1982' by Nam-joo Cho.
According to the results of a survey on the sales status of Korean literature published overseas between 2016 and 2020 by LTI Korea on the 18th, 'Kim Ji-young, Born 1982' sold more than 300,000 copies in 10 languages during this period.
Especially in Japan, since its publication in 2018, it has sold more than 200,000 copies and has established itself as a steady seller.
Han River's 'The Vegetarian' sold more than 160,000 copies in 13 languages, Son Won-pyeong's 'Almond' sold more than 90,000 copies in Japan, and Jeong Yoo-jung's 'Origin of Species' sold more than 20,000 copies in Brazil.
This is the result of identifying the sales volume of 492 types (30 languages), which is about 75% of a total of 658 types of Korean literature (37 languages) published overseas with the support of the translator.
As a result of the survey, 34 books have sold more than 5,000 copies over the past five years.
There were 16 works that were published in 2020 and sold more than 5,000 copies in one year.
Kim Young-ha's 'Memoir of a Murderer', published in German, won the 2020 German Independent Publishers' Literary Award and the German Mystery Literary Award in the international category, and sold more than 10,000 copies.
(Photo = Yonhap News)