Viral bookstore draws people for the photo op, but the books keep them there
SOKCHO, Gangwon Province — For many Koreans, reading on the beach is still an unusual concept, just like seeing someone wear a bikini without a cover-up.
But on a small beach in Korea, something is changing.
On Aug. 26, two middle-aged women sat in beach chairs, their feet sinking into warm sand as gentle waves lapped at their toes. They both had a book in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. Now and then, they looked up at the sea, then back down at the page.
They had come to the Three Feet Bookstore, a small blue three-wheeled vehicle topped with a pink, closet-like bookshelf. Parked by the sea, it has become a familiar, almost magical fixture along the Sokcho coast in Gangwon Province.
Moon So-yun, one of the two women, said this was her sixth visit this year, having first come in July.
“I traveled from Seoul for this every week. This time, I brought my aunt along with me,” she told The Korea Herald.
So what keeps bringing her back? Freedom, she said. The kind that libraries don’t necessarily offer.
“I enjoy the freedom here because there are no strict rules. We can talk about what we are reading, sip wine, and also enjoy the beach,” she said.
Park Young-ah, who started the seaside bookstore, has noticed the same thing.
“While the vehicle may initially play the role of drawing people to the site, it's the experience of reading on the beach that brings them back,” she said.
That’s why the beach chairs are loaned out for free, Park added.
Kim Seul-gi, a woman in her 30s, was among the first customers waiting when the bookstore opened its pink doors on Aug. 26. She helped Park keep the door of the bookshelf open and picked up books that the sea breeze had knocked off the shelves.
Then she took a seat herself.
For roughly an hour, she read Patrick Suskind’s "Three Stories and a Reflection." But her eyes weren’t glued to the page. Every so often, she stopped to look at the sea, taking in the view before returning to her book.
“Once you make a purchase, you can borrow a chair, and there’s no time limit,” she said. “So you can sit by the sea and read for as long as you like. It’s not just about reading a book. You get to connect with nature, too.”
“I would have stayed longer if it hadn’t been so chilly today,” she said. She was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt.
An Austrian couple, Haeyeon Lim and Songhay Toldon, who were staying in the area on vacation, were browsing the shelves, too. The bookstore wasn’t part of their usual walking route, they said. They were simply strolling along the coast for a change when the eye-catching blue vehicle caught their attention.
"It feels accommodating that they also have English books," Toldon said. "I was actually surprised that they have an English selection."
And apparently, they aren’t the only foreigners who have wandered in.
After several posts about the little vehicle went viral, Park began noticing more international visitors. She responded by adding a selection of English-language books, including well-known Korean titles such as Min Jin Lee’s "Pachinko" and Kim Youn-hee’s “Rattaila.”
Then came an even bigger international moment. On Aug. 29, Dua Lipa’s book club featured the bookstore in an Instagram post.
But the bookstore’s online fame wasn’t exactly an accident, Park said.
She had always wanted the place to reach beyond people who already loved books and independent bookstores. She wanted it to feel less intimidating to people who weren’t particularly close to books in the first place.
"I thought those people (book enthusiasts) would turn up anyway," Park said. "My goal was to make those who don't usually read books come."
So she broke a few traditional bookstore rules. Instead of telling visitors not to take photos, she encouraged them to come for the photo.
And it worked.
"About half of our visitors are interested in books, and the other half are what I call ones with Seongsu-dong vibes," Park said, referring to a district in Seoul known as the capital’s latest hipster mecca. She described them as fashionable, but not exactly what you would picture when you hear the word “bookworm.”
Still, Park doesn’t want the bookstore to become just another Instagram backdrop.
Even if Instagram is what draws visitors in at first, she wants to nudge them toward reading gently, she stressed.
That philosophy also shapes the books she puts on the shelves. She tends to choose more lighthearted titles.
"People come here to get a break from their everyday lives," Park said. "Do they really need to read something heavy here?"
And there is one more thing she deliberately doesn’t do: recommend books.
“I think the whole process of browsing matters,” she explained.
“People often ask me, ‘Can you recommend a book for me?’” Park said. “But they don’t necessarily have much interest in looking through the books themselves. It can feel as though buying a book is simply a toll they have to pay because they came all the way here.”
Instead, she wants visitors to stumble upon a book themselves. She believes that choosing it makes them more likely to read it.
“I thought it would be sad if, as a bookstore, we forgot what we are at our core,” she said. “So I wanted to lead them toward reading.”
ssh@heraldcorp.com
