The Journal of Culture Contents ISSN:2287-2256(Print) 2671-7026(Online) 문화콘텐츠연구

As media environments have been switched to digital environments, paper book reading populations have been decreasing. In addition, the aggressive marketing of open markets, large bookstores, and online bookstores brought about changes in book consumption patterns into ‘more convenient, faster, and cheaper’ patterns. This led to the shrinkage of local bookstores that are inferior in terms of scales and capitals. As of the end of 2013, the number of bookstores in South Korea was 2,331. Of the bookstores that disappeared since 2011, the ratio of small bookstores of which the exclusive area was smaller than 165m² reaches 96.7%(246->238). Local bookstores have been also showing diverse measures for creation of profits to save themselves such as also selling fancy products or attempting changes into complex cultural spaces where cultural or artistic events are held. These are changes reflecting customers desires for cultural consumption that are moving toward more interesting and convenient targets. These changes can be interpreted as positive signals that as future type bookstores and as the pivots of local reading culture ecosystems, local bookstores will never disappear. As practice strategies for the vision of cultural prosperity ‘achievement of national happiness through reading promotion’, the government presents diverse support plans such as the formation of local bookstores into cultural spaces. In this respect, in the present paper, the potential of local bookstores as major strongholds for the formation of local reading culture ecosystems is explored centering on domestic/foreign success cases thereby seeking for ways for changes into future type bookstores in order to promote the activation of local bookstores.