Is 'text hip' the evolution or degradation of books?

Chun Young-paik

The author is a professor at Hongik University specializing in art history and visual philosophy.

Art history is filled with paintings of women reading. Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s “Young Girl Reading” (c. 1769) shows how 18th-century Rococo art portrayed female readers. Rather than an intellectual subject, the woman appears absorbed, vulnerable and romantic, becoming a beautiful object for viewers to contemplate. Her bright yellow dress, flushed cheeks and ruffled collar draw our eyes toward her body and the textures of her clothes.

The desire to become intellectual ourselves often emerges as attraction to someone who reads — a desire for an intelligent other. A recent trend at large Seoul bookstores of asking strangers for their phone numbers may sound like a joke, but it is a real-life version of the assumption that “a woman reading is beautiful.” We seek identification through another person’s reading. Trying to infer someone’s intellect and disposition from the book in their hands raises a question: Is reading culture deteriorating or evolving?

We have entered an era when print is fashionable. “Text hip" describes a trend among Gen Z, raised in a digital environment, who regard analog reading as rare and stylish and use it to express identity and taste. Reading is no longer merely a quiet solitary pastime. It has expanded into book-based networking, with people sharing affinities and forming relationships. Approaching strangers in bookstores is part of the same phenomenon.

Bookstores are no longer silent, static spaces. They have become cultural complexes that combine cafes, exhibitions and lectures. Independent bookstores and book bars in Seoul neighborhoods such as Seongsu-dong and Mangwon-dong offer places to spend time alone but also opportunities to exchange books and ideas with strangers.

The numbers support the trend. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s “2025 National Reading Survey” found that while the adult reading rate fell to 38.5 percent, the rate among people in their 20s rebounded to 75.3 percent. Organizers estimated that 150,000 people attended the Seoul International Book Fair in June, with people in their 20s and 30s accounting for a large share. Trends such as copying passages by hand and decorating books can also be understood as efforts to escape digital overstimulation and think more slowly. On the surface, reading culture appears to be enjoying a revival.

The problem is that for many young people, books are increasingly objects to carry, display or post on social media rather than to read. They consume AI summaries or social media instead of spending the time required to finish books themselves. Consumption may end with book covers, bookmarks and merchandise rather than the text.

One example is a line of “literature bread” jointly marketed by a retailer and publisher. What drew attention was not the bread but transparent bookmarks featuring character-style redesigns of covers from collections of world literature and poetry. Consumers, in other words, were buying the packaging of literature rather than literature itself. Even publishing insiders are unsure whether such merchandise consumption leads to reading. From this perspective, text hip risks becoming a degradation or mutation that reduces books from vehicles for thought to material accessories.

Yet dividing text hip neatly into the evolution or degradation of reading is too simplistic. The trend contains both possibilities. In an age dominated by stimulating videos and fleeting encounters, there is something encouraging about people connecting through books.

But an old Korean saying warns against caring more about the food offered after a Buddhist service than the prayers themselves. If people skim others’ tastes as if checking credentials and focus more on encounters than nourishment from serious exchanges about reading, books become mere tools.

Where will this unexpected new reading trend lead? No one can confidently predict its course. For now, there is some comfort in the fact that books remain alive.

Still, Nam June Paik’s remark inevitably comes to mind like an ominous prophecy: “Paper is dead, except for toilet paper.”