The Most Borrowed Book by 20s Youth at Public Libraries is 'Decision to Leave'

Over the past year, the literary genre most borrowed by people in their 20s at public libraries was 'plays,' with Park Chan-wook and Jung Seo-kyung's Decision to Leave being the most read among them.

The National Library of Korea recently analyzed public library loan data from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023, revealing that the share of people in their 20s borrowing 'plays' accounted for 31.8%, the highest proportion recorded. Loans of 'plays' increased by 9.6% compared to the previous year.

The top borrowed titles included script collections such as Park Chan-wook and Jung Seo-kyung's Decision to Leave, Kim Bora's House of Hummingbird, and Lee Na-eun's Our Beloved Summer. A library official analyzed, “It seems that a new trend of treating script collections like 'goods' has extended into libraries.”

In the non-fiction category, books covering overall design work such as layout, color, photography, and fonts attracted attention, including Hayato Ozawa's Design, Is This How You Do It?, Kim So-hee's Making KakaoTalk Emoticons, and Lee Sang-in's The Designer's Way of Thinking.

In the first half of last year, the number of paper book loans by people in their 20s at public libraries was 2,203,676, showing a pattern similar to previous years.