The reality is that many in the industry are already actively using AI, while other parties are vehemently opposed to AI and want to stifle honest debate.

A “national appeal” takes shape

The Korean Publishers Society has drafted a “national appeal” – delightfully bluntly titled “No Books, No AI” – calling for fair compensation after Anthropic reportedly bought hundreds of thousands of Korean-language books and illegally downloaded works by authors including Han Kang, Hwang Sok-yong and Shin Kyung-sook.

As of 16 October, 158 organisations and 321 individuals – among them novelists Kim Nam-il and Kim Yi-jeong, poets Na Hee-duk and Ryu Keun, and translator Hong Han-byeol – had signed. The group plans to deliver the appeal to government, the National Assembly and AI companies.

What the appeal demands

The document rests on a simple principle: disclosure is where accountability begins. AI companies, it argues, must record which works they trained on, their sources and the legal basis for use, and allow rights holders to verify this. Silence must never be treated as consent, and small presses and individual creators with weak bargaining power must be able to negotiate on fair terms. “The government and the National Assembly must not restrict creators’ rights in the name of fostering industry.”

The legal backdrop

The appeal lands amid significant litigation elsewhere. In Bartz v. Anthropic, court filings revealed the company downloaded roughly four million pirated digital books between 2021 and 2022 – an internal effort dubbed “Project Panama” – before shifting to bulk purchases of physical books, which were scanned and shredded. On 20 July 2026, a US federal judge granted final approval to a $1.5 billion settlement, covering some 482,000 works at roughly $3,000 eac.h.

Korean authors now have a potentially strong route to compensation. The Literature Translation Institute of Korea has identified 21 eligible English-translated works – including Han Kang’s Human Acts and Shin Kyung-sook’s Please Look After Mom – and notified the authors.

Bulk buying, regional fallout

Court records show Anthropic contracted with Woongjin Booxen, Korea’s largest wholesaler, purchasing an estimated 250,000–300,000 books. Kyobo Book Centre and Yes24 have fielded similar bulk-buy enquiries.

In Japan, Nippon Shuppan Hanbai admitted supplying Anthropic for roughly a year from December 2024, prompting a backlash from the Japan Book Publishers Association.

The View From The Beach

The appeal echoes the Frankfurt Declaration, issued on 6 October by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association and some 120 publishers, urging the EU to mandate disclosure of training data and establish fair licensing frameworks.

The latest industry perspective is that Korean publishers, like their German counterparts, are not asking to halt AI – they are asking to be paid.

The reality of course is that many in the industry are already actively using AI, while other parties, such a the UK’s Society of Authors, are vehemently opposed to AI and want to stifle honest debate.

This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsfeed.