The Gochang Bookstore Village, Korea’s first “bookstore village,” was created by six independent bookstores. The rural booktown  opened in October 2025, beginning with Lee Yun-ho, a former culture critic who left Seoul in search of a quieter place to open a bookstore.

Lee met Kang Jun-seok and Hwang Kyeong-sun, a couple who run Mangrove bookstore, which is dedicated to nature and environmental books, through a rural nonprofit group. They subsequently offered Lee their unused land in Gochang, leading six like-minded individuals and families to come together in 2023 to begin building a book village.

The bookstore village occupies about five acres and features nine colorful wooden buildings housing bookstores and residences, as well as small gardens. The six stores operate more like a community than competitors. Shop owners said they take turns watching each other’s stores, farm together, and share meals in a communal kitchen.

The village offers more than books. It also runs a cafe that hosts author talks. The village also offers a monthly subscription service that delivers care packages filled with locally grown vegetables and books for a monthly fee of 20,000 won. Three of the bookstores also provide lodging, allowing visitors to read late into the night in shops that remain unlocked.

Gochang County, North Jeolla, is designated a Unesco Biosphere Reserve, the rural county is quietly reinventing itself as a “book stay” destination as well as an ecological preserve.