r/books • u/ocularius61 • 6h ago
Why are overseas buyers ordering one copy of 100,000 different Korean books?
https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/korea/why-are-overseas-buyers-ordering-one-copy-of-100000-different-korean-books/12921431Foreign companies have approached Kyobo, Yes24 and others seeking one copy of each title, raising concerns among Korean publishers and booksellers that the firms intend to use them to train AI.
Published October 15, 2026 - 7:01 a.m. Modified October 15, 2026 - 8:45 a.m.
Kyobo Book Centre has received unusual bulk orders for as many as 100,000 Korean-language books — any title, as long as each one is different — in what it suspects may be an effort to acquire material for AI training, according to the bookstore chain on Wednesday.
Exclusive reporting by the JoongAng Ilbo found that it has received such inquiries since early this year from companies based overseas that wanted to purchase Korean-language books in bulk.
“Most of the inquiries came from U.S. companies,” a Kyobo source told the JoongAng Ilbo. “About 10 companies have contacted us so far.”
The companies that reached out did not ask for particular books or even particular genres. Instead, they wanted about 100,000 different titles, with just one copy of each.
“The transactions differed from ordinary purchases because the buyers appeared to be trying to secure as many different titles as possible,” the representative said. “Overseas bookstores in the United States, Europe and Vietnam that purchase Korean books generally provide a book list and explain the purpose of the purchase.”
A similar pattern emerged in August when an Arizona-based company in the United States approached book retailer Yes24’s used-book business and book store Seoul Book Bogo about buying large quantities of secondhand books.
The potential buyer told JoongAng Ilbo that it was seeking books in a number of categories, excluding children's titles.
The Arizona-based company said it was buying one copy of each title and that the number of different titles mattered more than the total number of books purchased. The company also contacted Kyobo about a possible purchase.
AI training does not require multiple copies of the same title.
Kyobo said it asked the prospective buyers to identify the final recipients of the books.
The companies reportedly replied by saying the information of the final recipient is confidential and cannot be disclosed.
The companies also declined to explain the purpose of the purchases. Some denied that the books were intended for AI training but some said the final recipient was a data-related company.
Kyobo ultimately ended the talks.
“We determined that we could not rule out the possibility that the books would be used for AI training,” Kyobo official said. “Considering the potential risks such transactions could pose to Korean publishers, bookstores and the broader book distribution industry, we informed the companies that we could not proceed unless the final recipient and intended use of the books were confirmed.”
The book retailer called for systematic support.
“Publishers and distributors need to share information and establish guidelines for responding to purchases [suspected of being intended for AI training],” Kyobo Book Centre said.
The practice is not limited to used books.
AI companies overseas have also purchased newly published books. Nippon Shuppan Hanbai, a major Japanese book distributor commonly known as Nippan, sold new Japanese-language books to U.S. AI company Anthropic for a year beginning in December 2024, according to the Japan Book Publishers Association.
A U.S. court ruling finalized in July last year also established that Anthropic had used new books, as well as used ones, for AI training.
The publishing industry has begun moving more quickly as cases emerge of suspicious purchases involving both new and used books.
The Korean Publishers Association discussed possible responses at a board meeting on Tuesday.
The association decided to send official letters to regular bookstores, used book shops and distributors to survey the extent of such transactions. Participants also proposed forming a working-level consultative body with other publishing organizations.
The association also plans to join other publishing groups in issuing a joint statement in support of the “Frankfurt Appeal.” The appeal is an open letter signed by publishers and booksellers and was unveiled at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany on Oct. 6.
The letter criticizes the use of published works to train AI without authors’ consent and calls on AI companies to disclose which works were used.
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u/buddhistbulgyo 6h ago
AI. Duh. They want to dice up the books and feed them in a scanner.
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u/Own-Animator-7526 22m ago
would it be okay with you if they used non-destructive scanning? or if it was clear there were many additional copies of each book available? or if they bought two copies and donated one to a public library?
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u/bonedirgelessi 4h ago
the part that gets me is the "any title" bit. somewhere a poor kyobo employee is pulling 100,000 random books off shelves including the 2014 tax code and a cookbook for airfryer toast.
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u/Tall-Log-1955 6h ago
According to multiple court cases, AI training on legally acquired books is fair use
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u/made-of-questions 5h ago
US courts or Korean courts?
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u/Own-Animator-7526 5h ago
It seems that the Korean implementation of copyright law follows the same fair use model as the US law.
https://platformeconomyinsights.com/south-koreas-take-on-ai-training-and-copyright-fair-use/
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u/Comfortable-Gap3124 6h ago
Doesn't mean book sellers want to or have to sell to AI ghouls. It also doesn't mean I have to respect AI stealing creative works just because it's "legal".
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[deleted]
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u/Comfortable-Gap3124 5h ago
Plenty of laws have gone on the books that never should have. You're right, I don't respect these people or their 'work.' Just because a bunch of rich people convinced some judge what their doing is ok doesn't really make it any better. There are plenty of useful applications for AI. Outsourcing our creativity will never be one. Fuck using AI to create 'litature' and fuck the ghouls who push it.
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u/Own-Animator-7526 5h ago
How much is Disney paying you?
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u/Comfortable-Gap3124 5h ago
Lol acting like AI companies are any different than Disney is stupidly naive. 👍
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u/Own-Animator-7526 5h ago
I suppose that's one way of looking at it.
But to me saying that ideas can be copyrighted, and that exercising fair use rights is stealing, is exactly Disney propaganda.
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u/SandysBurner 5h ago
How much is Anthropic paying you?
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u/Own-Animator-7526 4h ago
I wish! I pay them, gladly, for their transformative output -- analysis and discussion of ideas.
I don't pay rent seekers like Disney.
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u/metametapraxis 6h ago
It shouldn't be though. One has to wonder how some of those judges are being rewarded for these decisions. If a book is turned into a bunch of probabilities, it is still a representation of the book, just as much as the digital content of a PDF is.
The AI companies are stealing the entirety of man's intellectual creation.
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u/Own-Animator-7526 5h ago
I hate to break it to you, but "the entirety of man's intellectual creation is not copyrightable". Copyright protection is limited to certain aspects of commercial exploitation of creative expression.
Ideas belong to all humanity, not to the Disney's of the world.
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u/Comfortable-Gap3124 5h ago
You're saying that when these AI companies want to own all of their "creative properties". They want to be just like Disney.
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u/Own-Animator-7526 5h ago edited 3h ago
AI companies do not make such claims. They are just buying individual books, just like you and me, because in this case purchasing the book clearly unlocks the fair use right.
Again, AI companies do not claim that they own the creative expression contained within books. They do claim that reusing ideas is a right protected under fair use.
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u/metametapraxis 4h ago
I hate to break it to you, but almost everything from the last 50-70 years (depending on jurisdiction, author date of death, etc) IS, in fact, copyrightable.
"...certain aspects of commercial exploitation.."
AI companies are using this material for commercial exploitation."Ideas belong to all humanity, not to the Disney's of the world."
You think the AI companies are doing this to share with humanity? Bless you for your naiveté.Also, WTF has this to with Disney or corporations like them. Weird take.
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u/DharmaPolice 4h ago
The current copyright regime is very much influenced by Disney. Look up the history of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act. Sometimes nicknamed the Mickey Mouse Act.
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u/metametapraxis 2h ago
Disney lobbied for extension of copyright, but copyright was a real thing before Disney did that. It is absurd to say that copyright should basically not exist, as a pushback against Disney lobbying for it to be too long (I agree it is currently too long, FWIW).
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u/Own-Animator-7526 3h ago
Briefly:
A series of court cases has determined that commercial exploitation does not obviate fair use. Moreover, the impact on any existing market is only one of the four factors -- it is not the overriding factor.
Nobody says AI companies are doing it to share with humanity. People do say that AI companies are exercising fair use rights in developing transformative applications.
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u/metametapraxis 2h ago
I understand this. My point was that the rulings around this being fair use seem to suspect at best.
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u/Own-Animator-7526 1h ago
What do you mean by "suspect"?
Historically, independent artists, small media groups, or individual creators are the ones who have fought for fair use rights against massive corporations or well-funded entities. And these decisions long predate the rise of AI.
It's the little guys who were getting crushed by the claim that fair use might affect the bottom line.
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u/PiqueExperience 3h ago
Does the ai have to be taught a foreign language, even the grammatical structure, or does it absorb so much info that the language is irrelevant?
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u/theonebigrigg 3h ago
A little bit of both, but at this point, they know the language well enough that the language isn’t at all relevant - they’re just trying to get as much text of any kind as is possible.
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u/morganrbvn 2h ago
The original pitch for a key technology behind current LLMs (attention) was how effectively they could translate between languages.
By training on so much data in each language it was good at finding equivalent phrases between languages as opposed to word by word translation. It’s also stronger at different sentence orders between languages.
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u/bubblebolle 2h ago
There was an article about the same thing happening to second-hand Japanese bookstores. The reaction to it by bookstores and publishers didn't seem well organised like this, though.
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u/OtmShanks55 6h ago
AI reasons