South Korea’s largest bookstore chain, Kyobo Book Centrerejected an order from 100,000 books arrived from a foreign company with which he had never worked. The request was unusual: one copy of each title, without indicating topics or genres. In the Korean publishing sector there is a growing suspicion that volumes purchased in this way serve to train models artificial intelligencereports the Korea Herald.
Kyobo asked who the final recipient of the books was, but the company simply indicated a “data company”, explaining that the contract prevented it from providing other details. “We had to refuse the order because the company that placed it was not the final recipient,” explained an official of the chain. The buyer’s name and country were not disclosed.
About ten requests from abroad
According to the Korea JoongAng Daily, about ten foreign, mostly US, companies have contacted Kyobo with similar requests since the beginning of 2026. Some denied that the books were intended for AI, others indicated a data company as the recipient. In August, an Arizona-based company also requested large quantities of used books from Yes24’s second-hand department and Seoul Book Bogo bookstore.
Seoul Book Bogo director Kim Su-hyeon has a guess: “I suspect that AI companies have finished training their models on new books.” Massive orders of used books have also been reported in Germany and in Jimbocho, Tokyo’s booksellers’ district.
The regulatory vacuum
The Korean Publishers Association will launch an investigation of bookstores, second-hand retailers and distributors into attempted bulk purchases. It will also ask the government and the National Assembly to strengthen copyright protection on books. In Korea, a 2023 amendment requiring authors’ consent for the use of works in AI training was not passed. “We are in a regulatory vacuum,” Park Jeong-in, a researcher at Duksung Women’s University, told the JoongAng Daily.
Professor Seo Yong-seok, of Kaist, speaks of “imperialism of AI models”: “Korea is effectively transitioning from a producer of knowledge to a supplier of raw knowledge and a consumer of AI services.”