Publishers from across Asia will gather to examine how artificial intelligence is reshaping the publishing industry and to discuss how the business should respond.
The Korean Publishers Society said on the 29th that it will host the 2026 Asia Publishing Week in Seoul from Nov. 3 to 6. Publishers from seven overseas markets — Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey and Germany — will take part alongside their Korean counterparts.
This year’s theme is “Publishing in the Age of AI: Between Crisis and Opportunity.” With AI now embedded across the entire publishing process, from acquisitions and translation to editing, production and marketing, participants will share hands-on experience and response strategies on issues such as AI copyright and technology adoption.
Participants will present and discuss AI issues facing
Participants will present and discuss AI issues facing the publishing industry in their respective countries at a roundtable on Nov. 4 at the JU youth culture center. On Nov. 5, they will visit Kyobo Book Centre and Millie’s Library to review the state of Korea’s bookstore sector and digital publishing.
The centerpiece event, the 2026 Asia Publishers Forum, will be held on Nov. 5 at the 50th Anniversary Hall of the Changbi Seogyo Building. Song Kyung-seok, a department head at Hanbit Media, will share cases in which publishers have put AI to work in day-to-day operations, while Bui Thu Ha, editor-in-chief of Vietnam’s Alpha Books, will present ways to improve book discoverability in the age of AI.
The 2026 Asia Book Award ceremony will take place at the same forum. Selection committees from five markets — Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong — have chosen four titles as the Asian Books of the Year. The winners are China’s “Anxious Kingship” by Huang Shuzhi and “Let There Be Light” by Liang Hong, and Japan’s “Diplomacy of Korea’s Successive Dynasties” by Morihira Masahiko and “Currency in History” by Kuroda Akinobu.
The Korean Publishers Society also published a webzine,
The Korean Publishers Society also published a webzine, Asia Publishing Insight, built around this year’s theme of AI and publishing. Youngsuk Chi, chairman of Elsevier and a former president of both the Association of American Publishers and the International Publishers Association, wrote in a contribution that AI training must begin with the permission of copyright holders. “What we worry about is not shelves standing empty, but shelves filled with things that look like good food but are not,” Chi said.
Yu Hua, author of the global bestsellers “To Live” and “Chronicle of a Blood Merchant,” argued that AI’s biggest weakness is that it almost never makes mistakes. “The truths we know were basically all discovered through error,” he said, addressing the possibility that AI could replace writers.
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Original reporting by Lee Jae-yong for Seoul Economic Daily.
AI-translated from Korean. Quotes from foreignxact original wording
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