Young adults in their 20s and 30s are immersed in reading these days... Text Hip marketing even sparks opening-time rushes at convenience stores

[Financial News] A “Text Hip” craze among people in their 20s and 30s, who enjoy reading as a “hip hobby,” is spreading beyond the publishing market to the distribution industry as a whole. As reading has evolved beyond simply acquiring knowledge into an activity that expresses personal tastes and lifestyles, a new consumer market is taking shape not only for books themselves but also for food products featuring literary content, accessories such as book covers and bookmarks, and interior goods for decorating bookshelves.
According to the Seoul International Book Fair, around 160,000 people visited the “2026 Seoul International Book Fair,” held last June, the fair said on the 14th. That was 60% more than the roughly 100,000 visitors in 2022, according to figures compiled by the Korean Publishers Association. Industry insiders point to the global Text Hip craze as the reason behind the increase.
Whereas reading was once primarily associated with acquiring knowledge and culture, the Text Hip trend is a way of expressing one’s tastes by sharing what books one reads and how one keeps them. On social media, people are now sharing and consuming a wide range of reading-related experiences, including posting proof of reading, copying out passages by hand, and decorating book covers.
The distribution industry is also drawing on the Text Hip craze when planning products. One example is “Minumsa Bread,” which GS25 launched in August in collaboration with Minumsa Publishing Group. After reading merchandise that Minumsa presented at the Seoul International Book Fair with Today’s Cuteness, a character intellectual property (IP) platform, became popular on social media and sold out, GS25 expanded the concept into a convenience-store product.
Minumsa Bread comes with a bookmark featuring popular characters among people in their 20s and 30s—Cheese Duck and Busil Gamja—incorporated into Minumsa Publishing Group’s flagship “World Literature Collection” series, tucked inside the bread packaging. It made headlines soon after launch, with people posting online to show they had made an “opening-time run” to buy it. All 2 million units prepared for sale eventually sold out, and the product’s run ended with the final order on the 7th.
The popularity also drove traffic online. From August 21 to 31, shortly after Minumsa Bread launched, daily active users (DAU) of GS25’s “Our Neighborhood GS” app rose by about 15% from the same period the previous month. Minumsa Bread also consistently ranked as the app’s top search term after its launch. More consumers turned to the app to check stock and buy the sold-out product, driving traffic to the platform.
Demand for reading-related accessories is also clear on shopping platforms. According to Zigzag, from the 1st to the 21st of last month, searches for “bookmarks” rose 660% year over year, while searches for “bookshelves” increased 640%. Searches for “book covers,” which let readers cover the book they are reading and decorate it to suit their tastes, also rose 27%. Products that combine function and design, such as “reading rings” worn on the thumb to make it easier to hold a book open, are also attracting interest.
A GS25 representative said, “We developed Minumsa Bread after taking note of the spread of Text Hip culture, particularly among younger generations,” adding, “It is an unusual case that effectively achieved a sell-through rate of close to 100%, with the product remaining sold out from shortly after launch until it was discontinued.”
[email protected] Kim Hyun-ji Reporter