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Book Gorae Book Gorae, the publishing imprint of DreamingKite Co., is an award-winning Korean children’s publisher specializing in picture books that combine storytelling with innovative multimedia experiences. Since 2015, it has published over 220 titles and actively expanded its works into global markets. Its achievements include the first Korean picture book acquired by Macmillan USA and winning the 2025 BolognaRagazzi CrossMedia Award—a first for an Asian publisher—with Star Papa. Book Gorae continues to extend its IP across interactive apps, AR books, immersive video, and animation, bringing Korean children’s stories to audiences worldwide. Titles Perilla-topia (Kkaennip-topia) Noah is a Korean American teenager in St. Louis, the only child of a Korean mother and an American father named Mike. View Details The Star Papa A star farmer patiently nurtures magical seeds through darkness, storms, and meteors until they bloom into stars ready to illuminate the distant world. View Details The Elephant Got Stuck! Suji secretly brings her beloved elephant to school, where classmates turn a doorway disaster into a joyful lesson about friendship, teamwork, and belonging. View Details The Star Miner Child A young girl pans for gold with her siblings, imagining each tiny fleck as a star carrying food, medicine, education, dignity, and hope. View Details Daddy, When Will You Come? War forces a bear family to flee without their ambulance-driver father, leaving the children to endure displacement while waiting and hoping for reunion. View Details The Tiger Came Back A pregnant tiger searches for a safe home in a country that celebrates tiger images everywhere but leaves no room for living tigers. View Details River, Stay With Me A child watches a beloved riverside disappear under development, learning that progress can erase ecosystems, memories, community, and the places that shape us. View Details Heart of the Wall A roadside wall silently receives animals struck by cars, becoming a witness whose stillness turns grief, helplessness, and remembrance into unexpected, enduring compassion. View Details The Old Boat An aging ship sails one final journey through fear and storm, carrying memories of strength, loss, dignity, and the longing to rest peacefully. View Details The Prairie Across an open grassland, life runs, rests, disappears, and returns, revealing nature as an endless rhythm of birth, death, silence, and renewal again. View Details Like a Tree A growing ginkgo tree watches generations of apartment life unfold, discovering that time, loneliness, connection, and memory deepen quietly with every season passing. View Details The Pinch Runner A patient pinch runner waits beyond the spotlight until one decisive moment proves that preparation, teamwork, speed, and quiet dedication can change everything. View Details The Black Chameleon A black chameleon who never changes color discovers beneath a starry night that difference can become beauty when he embraces himself exactly as-is. View Details The Magic Scissors Running late for school, Geon uses magic scissors to cut away rules, transforming an ordinary morning into a joyful playground powered by imagination. View Details The Gorilla Hair Salon A haircut-hating boy enters a mysterious salon and discovers gorillas secretly transforming discarded human hair into dazzling fur fashions, friendship, and unexpected wonder. View Details Tomacula A lonely thirteen-year-old befriends a tomato-eating vampire, then faces a predatory teacher whose dark plans force him to choose courage, trust, and survival. View Details One Day A rabbit searching for her missing father joins other animals, discovering shared loss, displacement, and the hidden ecological cost of human convenience today. View Details What’s That Sound? Following mysterious noises through an ordinary afternoon, a curious child discovers nature’s hidden music and learns that wonder begins by stopping to listen. View Details The Wind-Up Kid A speed-obsessed boy removes his winding key and discovers that slowing down reveals friendship, freedom, ordinary beauty, and a life beyond constant competition. View Details Knock, Knock, Knock Joy follows playful clues from friend to friend, searching for a mysterious piano so she can give her brother a heartfelt birthday song. View Details The Happy President, José Mujica José Mujica rises from hardship and imprisonment to lead Uruguay with humility, proving that justice, simplicity, and compassion can define true political power. View Details The Day the Earth Split in Two After catastrophe divides their world, animals adapt to opposite climates, then reunite transformed, discovering recognition and belonging can survive profound visible difference together. View Details My Summer Days A carefree summer at a country stream becomes a treasury of friendship, nature, play, and memories that continue glowing long after childhood ends. View Details The Tiger's Candy Bouquet Three candy-loving pig brothers challenge a tiger, and the youngest uses courage, quick thinking, and teamwork to rescue his siblings and escape danger. View Details It’s Okay to Go Slowly A boy without a dream discovers through family adventures that life need not be rushed, and joy can grow at its own pace. View Details Secret Friend Behind masks and classroom partitions, a lonely child finds a secret friend and discovers imagination, play, and connection can survive even isolating times. View Details Demian Sinclair moves between light and darkness, guided by mysterious Demian, until guilt, fear, and loneliness crack open a path toward his authentic self. View Details My Name is Quima A young cockroach survivor named Quima faces extermination, prejudice, and leadership, learning that dignity, courage, and coexistence matter even for the smallest lives. View Details A Ghost Lives in My House 1 A stubborn house ghost sets out to terrify modern humans, but his misfit spirit team becomes the unlikely protector of children facing fears more dangerous than the supernatural. View Details A Ghost Lives in My House 2: The Monsters Visit Korean house ghosts confront foreign monsters seeking supremacy, but rivalry becomes courage when they uncover cruelty, free stolen souls, and choose coexistence together. View Details The Cat Detective Agency A gifted stray cat opens a detective agency, solving neighborhood mysteries and learning that courage, kindness, and helping others can create a home. View Details Pudardak, the Rooster Who Found His Courage A boastful rooster journeys with unlikely animal companions, discovering that true courage grows through empathy, friendship, responsibility, and finding family beyond fear together. View Details The Old Man and the Sea After eighty-four empty days, Santiago battles a giant marlin and relentless sharks, preserving dignity, hope, and courage even when victory is stripped away. View Details I Am a Steamed Bun A proud steamed bun faces newer rivals by revealing the patient craft, tradition, and care that make his humble identity worth celebrating proudly. View Details Books Two girls from different social worlds discover friendship through shared reading, storytelling, and a handmade book in Joseon-era Korea, where stories build bridges. View Details The Last Dodo A trusting dodo faces extinction as outsiders disrupt Mauritius, revealing how human greed can destroy delicate ecosystems and how memory can inspire protection. View Details My Dinosaur Age When Mom transforms into a Tyrannosaurus, Seojun responds with tenderness, play, and patience, discovering that love can communicate beyond ordinary spoken words beautifully. View Details The Farmer of the Desert A lone farmer keeps planting seeds in barren desert sands, and one storm-scattered seed proves that patient hope can grow beyond visible failure. View Details My Mom Wears Underpants Over Her Pants Embarrassed by her yoga-loving mother, a child discovers on sports day that difference can become strength, pride, love, and joyful lasting family confidence. View Details Doo-Doo, the Hundredth Sheep Always overlooked as the hundredth sheep, Doo-Doo invents a new bedtime role, discovering her purpose by helping an exhausted world finally rest peacefully. View Details If Only I Could Change Chased by a dog, a cat transforms again and again, only to discover that every new form brings problems, and self-acceptance brings courage. View Details Odubangjeong: How to Chase Away Silly Ghosts Children discover Korea’s mythical guardians, learning that courage, wisdom, laughter, and ancient protective spirits can turn frightening ghost stories into empowering cultural adventures. View Details I Am a Firefly A firefly who believes it is a star discovers that even the smallest light can shine brightly, find belonging, and illuminate darkness together. View Details Lucy’s Song A nameless lost star meets a gentle cat, receives the name Lucy, and rediscovers her own light through friendship, music, comfort, and healing. View Details Dance After violence tears two siblings apart, a surviving girl transforms grief into remembrance, solidarity, and hope through silence, lanterns, paper boats, and dance. View Details The Wind and the Moon Jealous Wind battles the radiant Moon with all his force, only to discover that true beauty and quiet strength always return beyond control. View Details The Mugunghwa Flower Has Bloomed A female ssireum wrestler becomes the mugunghwa itself, gripping through darkness and adversity until strength, resilience, and Korean heritage bloom together on sand. View Details The Right to Be Poor A street humanist walks beside people pushed into poverty, revealing how dignity, listening, relationships, and welfare as a right can rebuild damaged lives. View Details Donghae A hidden girl and unwanted prince defy a prophecy demanding sacrifice, awakening guardian spirits while fighting to save their kingdom without erasing themselves. View Details Butterfly Princess A poor artisan’s son befriends a lonely princess and learns that silk flowers can preserve memory, dignity, friendship, and beauty beyond loss forever. View Details The Sudden Maeng Detective Accused after a classroom fire, a lonely boy becomes a detective and discovers every suspect hides wounds deeper than the mystery he investigates. View Details Tooth Monster A crooked-toothed boy and perfect-toothed monster cross worlds together, discovering courage, friendship, and self-acceptance can restore wishes and protect what makes them different. View Details Mireuksa's Treasure An orphan seeks treasure to save his sick sister, but friendship and loss teach him that sincere hearts can outweigh gold and status. View Details Beautiful Jeju Stories Six Jeju folktales bring wind goddesses, haenyeo, serpents, sea palaces, and mountains alive, revealing an island shaped by courage, reciprocity, community, and memory. View Details

The Sharjah–Asia Corridor: Where We Stand 2026.08.16 /news/sharjah-asia-corridor Insight Cross-market (Arab · Asia) ASIA CONTENT RADAR Arab World · Asia 7 MIN CO.MINT Editorial The publishing world is usually mapped through London, New York, and Frankfurt. A different axis — Gulf to Asia — has been assembling for years, and CO.MINT sits on it by design. CO.MINT Editorial Most maps of the publishing world are drawn through three cities: London, New York, Frankfurt. It is a useful map, and an incomplete one. A different axis has been assembling for years now, largely off to the side of that familiar story — one that runs between the Arabian Gulf and Asia. CO.MINT sits on it by design, so this first dispatch begins there. Consider how deliberately one end of that axis has been built. Sharjah, one of the seven emirates of the UAE, spent the last two decades turning itself into a publishing capital. It was named UNESCO World Book Capital in 2019. It built the world's first free zone dedicated entirely to publishing. Its book fair has grown into the largest rights marketplace on earth: the most recent edition drew more than 1.4 million visitors and some 2,350 publishing houses from over 200 countries. And its leading publishing figure, Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi, went on to serve as president of the International Publishers Association — an Arab publisher at the head of the global industry's representative body. None of this is decoration. It is infrastructure with intent. Through 2026, that infrastructure has been reaching east. Sharjah's publishing free zone joined the UAE delegation at the Beijing International Book Fair, presenting the emirate as a gateway between a fast-growing Arab publishing sector and the Asian markets that anchor much of the world's printing, rights trading, and digital distribution. Weeks earlier, the Sharjah Book Authority had sent a senior delegation into Malaysia ahead of the Kuala Lumpur International Book Fair — a fair that named Saudi Arabia its focus country. Behind these visits lies more than ceremony. The Malaysian book-retail venture Big Bad Wolf and its BookXcess brand now run a warehouse and events footprint that stretches from Southeast Asia across the Gulf into East Africa, with Sharjah as a hub. A corridor is being paved in both directions at once. And so the question that matters for an agency like ours becomes simple: what travels through it? Increasingly, the answer is source IP. Korea's content export model has quietly inverted. Where the country once sold finished dramas and films abroad, it now exports the stories themselves — the webtoons and webnovels that become the origin point for adaptations across screen, game, and print. By the Korea Creative Content Agency's count, the webcomic industry alone earned well over two trillion won in 2024, and Southeast Asia is already a rising share of its overseas market. The direction of travel is visible in individual titles: a Kakao webtoon, Love Always, has been reported as the basis for India's first Korean-webtoon-derived streaming adaptation, slated for the second half of 2026 — Korean-origin IP rebuilt for a South Asian audience rather than simply subtitled for it. When AI translation then collapsed the cost of moving Korean fiction into new languages, the economics of reaching readers in Jakarta, or across the Arab world, changed almost overnight. What is easy to miss is the financial plumbing beneath all this — and it is where the corridor becomes concrete. Both ends of the axis have built public money to push books outward, and those flows now point straight at each other. On the Arab side, Sharjah's Turjuman Award, launched in 2016, puts a prize of over 350,000 dollars behind Arabic titles translated into other languages, with the larger share going to the foreign publisher that takes on the translation rights and a portion to the original Arab house and the translator. Alongside it, the Sharjah International Book Fair has run a translation grant fund since 2011, and Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Zayed Book Award funds translations of Arabic literary and children's titles. On the Korean side, LTI Korea and KPIPA run translation and publication grants for overseas publishers, paid out — tellingly — only once a publishing contract with the rights holder is in place. Read together, these are two national systems subsidising the same journey from opposite banks: Arabic reaching outward, Korean reaching outward, and a growing incentive for a publisher on either side to pick up the other's list. Nowhere is that clearer than in children's books, which may be the corridor's fastest lane. Picture books travel on illustration more than language, they are heavily supported by grants, and they sit at the centre of both markets. The global children's rights trade runs through the Bologna Children's Book Fair, but the buyers and sellers increasingly include an Arabic children's publishing sector — anchored by houses such as Kalimat, founded in Sharjah by Sheikha Bodour — and a Korean picture-book sector with a deep, award-winning backlist. Shared themes, strong art, and grant funding on both sides make these natural counterparts. This is not a hypothetical for us: it is the everyday work of moving a Korean picture book toward an Arabic edition, and an Arabic list toward Asian readers. Put the pieces together — a deliberate Gulf-to-Asia corridor, a Korean IP engine now built to travel, and public money subsidising the crossing — and CO.MINT's position stops looking incidental. We represent Korean and Asian source material. On parts of our catalogue we hold exclusive mandates precisely in the Arabic-language and Indian-language markets this corridor serves, while other territories remain open. Through our work with Arab children's publishing, we act as an exclusive agent into Asia. We are not describing this axis from the outside. We work inside it. In the field — Tanweer Festival, Sharjah (2025). In November 2025, Sheikha Bodour Al Qasimi's Tanweer Festival gathered 183 artists from 23 nations in the Mleiha desert under a theme borrowed from Rumi — "What You Seek Is Seeking You." Among its large-scale desert installations stood a monumental chain sculpture by the Korean sculptor Seo Young Deok: a serene human head with closed eyes, welded from rusted chains, on the theme of meditation. CO.MINT produced and delivered the artist-and-work introduction film — shot at the sculptor's studio in Korea — that presented his practice to the festival's international audience. In it, he ties his own work to the very Rumi line the festival was built around: what we seek is already moving toward us. Korean creative work, commissioned into the heart of the Arab cultural calendar — with CO.MINT bridging the two. That is why this section exists, and why it carries the perspective it does. Industry news is everywhere; what is scarce is a reading of that news from someone standing at the meeting point of these two markets. For the creators we represent, the practical takeaway is this: your work's next home may not be an English one. It may be Arabic, or Indonesian, or Thai — markets that a London-centred map tends to leave until last, and that this corridor is bringing forward. For the partners who buy from us, the takeaway is that a bridge is only as good as the people who can read both banks. Rights move cleanly when someone understands the language, the contract customs, the grant paperwork, and the exclusivity lines on both sides at once. We will report from this corridor each month — the fairs, the deals, the grant programmes, and the shifts in how rights move between Asia and the Arab world — and we will always close with the same question we ask of every title we carry: what does this mean for the people whose stories are traveling? The next major waypoint is already on the calendar. In early November, Sharjah's publishers conference gathers the rights and translation trade ahead of the book fair that has become, for five years running, the largest rights marketplace in the world. We will be reading it closely, and reporting back. News & Insights reflects CO.MINT's market perspective as a rights agency working across Asian and Arab publishing. Figures cited are drawn from public industry reporting and may change as programmes and deals evolve.

Rights Inquiry First Name* Last Name* Email* Title/Book* Company/Organization* Rights Type* Translation Publication eBook Audiobook Film & TV Webtoon & Graphic Merchandising Other Language* English Korean Japanese Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Thai Vietnamese Indonesian Arabic French German Spanish Italian Portuguese Other Territory* Worldwide Korea Japan China Taiwan Hong Kong Southeast Asia India Middle East North America United Kingdom Europe Latin America Australia / New Zealand Other Message Submit

Khet Zaw’s Empire of Shadows: Rangoon Noir is a bestselling historical crime novel set in late-colonial and wartime Rangoon. Following a street fighter who rises to become the city’s most feared underworld boss, the story unfolds amid gang rivalries, political unrest, corruption, and the approach of World War II. Originally released online, the Burmese edition sold over 100,000 copies. Restructured for international readers, the English edition delivers faster pacing, cinematic storytelling, and intense character-driven drama. With its atmospheric noir setting and morally complex crime saga, Empire of Shadows also offers strong potential for TV, streaming, and webtoon adaptation. Silkworm Books Titles Empire of Shadows: Rangoon Noir In colonial Rangoon, a street fighter builds a criminal empire by mastering violence, politics, and betrayal—only to discover that surviving the collapse of one empire may require destroying his own. View Details

ABOUT CO.MINT Publishing Expertise. Technology in Mind. Our experience spans publishing, international rights, licensing, digital distribution, metadata and technology — giving CO.MINT a practical understanding of both the value of content and the systems that move it across markets and formats Across the Full Life of a Story. From print and translation to audio, screen and transmedia, we understand how stories can travel, evolve and create new value A Network Built Through Execution. Rights First. Technology Forward. As content moves across new formats and technologies, rights matter more than ever. CO.MINT builds new opportunities by defining what can be licensed, how it can be used and how value can be shared sustainably About CO.MINT Connecting Content Across Korea and the World CO.MINT connects stories, intellectual property and content businesses across Korea, Asia and the global market. Founded in Seoul in 2016, we work across international rights, translation publishing, market consulting, digital distribution and content-data licensing — helping creators, publishers, platforms and technology partners turn cross-border opportunities into real business. Who We Are From Local Knowledge to Cross-border Execution CO.MINT was founded on a simple belief: entering a new market requires more than information. It requires local knowledge, industry relationships and the ability to turn opportunities into execution. Since 2016, we have supported global publishing and digital-content companies entering Korea and Asia, from Pottermore’s first Korean digital launch of the Harry Potter editions to Storytel’s market research, entry strategy and launch preparation. 2016 CO.MINT Founded in Seoul CO.MINT begins as a cross-border publishing, digital-content and market consulting company, supporting international publishing businesses and global digital-content partnerships, including the first Korean digital launch of Pottermore’s Harry Potter editions. 2018–2019 From Market Research to Market Entry CO.MINT advises Storytel on Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia, supporting market research, partner development and Korean market-entry planning. This period establishes its core approach: Research → Strategy → Relationships → Execution. 2020–2022 Deepening Expertise in Audio, Digital Publishing and Licensing CO.MINT expands its expertise across audiobooks, digital publishing and licensing through extensive collaboration with publishers, authors and the Korean content industry. 2022 International Rights Business Launched CO.MINT formally launches its international rights business, connecting creators and rightsholders with publishers and adaptation partners worldwide 2023 A Year of Global Publishing Engagement CO.MINT expands its global presence through major publishing events, launches the AI-based rights platform MatchWHALE™, and develops new literary and publishing partnerships across Europe, Asia and the Arab world. 2024–2025 From Rights Agency to Global IP & Translation Publishing CO.MINT expands from Korean publishing rights into Asian story IP, translation publishing, localization and cross-media opportunities, while continuing its global digital-content distribution business. 2026 Publishing, AI and the Next Rights Economy CO.MINT strengthens its focus on publishing, copyright and emerging technologies, developing new opportunities in Content Data Licensing & Delivery while exploring sustainable models for the evolving rights economy. About Title 01 Change the text and add your own content, including any information that is relevant to share. Then customize the font, size and scale to make it your own. Services Title 02 Change the text and add your own content, including any information that is relevant to share. Then customize the font, size and scale to make it your own. Contact us Title 03 Change the text and add your own content, including any information that is relevant to share. Then customize the font, size and scale to make it your own. Item 1 Item 2 Item 3 Item 4 Industry Leadership Industry Insight Shaped through Global Engagement CO.MINT’s business is supported by active engagement with the international publishing and content industries. GeumJoo Lin, Co-Founder of CO.MINT, brings more than 20 years of experience spanning publishing, copyright licensing, digital content, audio, EdTech, international market development and technology. Her international speaking engagements have included the Audio Publishers Association Conference, the Sharjah International Book Fair Publishers Conference, the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, ReadMagine and the International Publishers Association Congress. Former Standing Director, Korea Publishers Association Juror, BolognaRagazzi CrossMedia Award Advisory Board Member, PublisHer Judge, Korea Contents Awards — Story Category Publishing-industry speaker and lecturer What We Believe Content Creates Connections A story can cross languages, markets and formats — becoming a translation, audiobook, webtoon, film or new form of content and data. Making that happen requires more than content. It takes rights, context, relationships and technology. CO.MINT connects these elements — linking content with opportunity, rights with technology, and Korea and Asia with the world. Global by Nature From Content to Opportunity Across rights, publishing partnerships, market entry, digital distribution and technology licensing, CO.MINT turns cross-border opportunities into practical, sustainable projects.

Copyright, and the Rights That Travel 2026.08.16 Insight RIGHTS & MARKETS /news/copyright%2C-and-the-rights-that-travel Global 7 MIN CO.MINT Editorial A book crosses borders not as one thing you own, but as a bundle of rights you license — sliced by territory, language, format, and term. Here is how that bundle comes apart, and why it matters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solo_Leveling https://kcomicsbeat.com/2024/11/12/the-history-of-solo-leveling/ https://otakira.com/en/blog/solo-leveling-webnovel-to-global-anime/ Foundations When a manuscript leaves an author's desk and begins its life in other languages, the first question people ask is "Who owns this?" It is the wrong question — or at least an incomplete one. Ownership is rarely what changes hands in international publishing. What travels across borders is something more precise: a set of permissions, carefully cut and licensed, one slice at a time. Copyright is not a single right. It is a bundle. The moment a work is created and fixed in some form, its author holds a cluster of separate economic rights — to reproduce it, to distribute it, to communicate it to the public, and, crucial for our work, to translate it and to make adaptations from it. Each of these can be licensed on its own terms, to different partners, in different places. A rights agency does not sell "the book." It licenses specific rights within that bundle. The clearest way to see this is to follow a single title as it comes apart. Consider Solo Leveling. It began, in the mid-2010s, as a Korean web novel by the writer Chugong — words on a screen, released a chapter at a time on a domestic platform. From that one origin, the rights fanned out. The story was licensed as a webtoon, drawn by a different artist entirely — itself a new creative work, with its own illustrator and adapting writer credited alongside the original author. It was collected into print volumes. Its English-language edition was licensed to a publisher in the United States. Years later the adaptation right was licensed again, this time to a Japanese animation studio — so that a Korean novel reached the world as an anime, then voiced separately in Japanese, Korean, English, and Hindi, each a further sub-licence. A live-action drama has been contracted but, at the time of writing, not yet released: a right granted and held in reserve. And much of that global readership surged not in the usual Western centres but across the Middle East and Southeast Asia. No one ever simply "sold Solo Leveling." Dozens of distinct rights were licensed — each to the right partner, in the right place, in the right form. Those licences are cut along four coordinates, and it is worth taking each in turn, because most confusion in a rights negotiation comes from blurring them. Territory defines where a partner may exploit the rights — a single country, a region, or the world. It sounds simple until a contract names a place that is also a language. "Indian rights" is a classic trap: does it mean the territory of India, or the Indian-language markets — Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and the rest — which reach readers well beyond India's borders? The two are not the same, and a licence that confuses them can be worth far more, or far less, than either side intended. We read that line carefully every time. Language defines which linguistic edition the licence covers, and it rarely maps neatly onto territory. Arabic is not a country: a single Arabic edition can serve more than twenty nations from the Gulf to North Africa, which is why Arabic-language rights are usually handled as one grant across a region rather than country by country. English runs the other way — often split into separate US, UK, and Commonwealth territories for the same language. Getting language and territory to line up cleanly is much of the craft. Format defines the shape the work may take: print, ebook, audio — or an adaptation into another medium entirely. This is where a single story multiplies, as Solo Leveling did from novel to webtoon to anime. It is also where a subtle point of law lives: an adaptation is a new work layered on the old one. The webtoon artist and the screenwriter hold rights in what they added, even as the original author's rights persist underneath. Untangling those layers — who may authorise a film of a webtoon of a novel — is exactly the kind of question that decides whether a deal is clean. Term defines how long the licence lasts, and what happens when it ends. Rights are almost never handed over forever; they are granted for a period, after which they revert to the author and can be licensed afresh. A backlist that has come back from an expired contract is not a dead asset — it is inventory ready to travel again, often into markets that weren't ready for it the first time. A fifth dimension runs through all four — exclusivity: whether the partner holds that slice alone, or shares it with others. Read together, these coordinates explain how a single title can carry very different arrangements at once. A work might be licensed exclusively in the Arabic-language and Indian-language markets, while remaining open and non-exclusive everywhere else. That is not a contradiction. It is simply the bundle, cut precisely — and it happens to describe how a good part of our own catalogue is structured. For creators, this framing is reassuring. Licensing a translation does not mean giving away the work. A well-drafted grant is narrow by default: it hands over only what is named, for only as long as it is named, and returns cleanly when the term ends. Everything outside the grant stays with the author. For buyers, the same framing is a discipline. A clean acquisition depends on knowing exactly which slice is being offered, by whom, and whether anyone else holds an overlapping claim. The value of a rights catalogue lies not in how many titles it lists, but in how clearly each rights position can be read. It helps to remember why any of this is enforceable abroad in the first place. Under the Berne Convention, which binds well over 180 countries, copyright arises automatically the moment a work is created — no registration, no notice, no formality required — and each member country must extend to foreign works the same protection it gives its own. A Korean picture book is therefore protected in almost every market on earth from the day it is drawn, under that country's own law. The author does not have to acquire protection abroad; they have to manage it. That is the difference an agency makes. One point often surprises partners new to Korean and East Asian works: economic rights and moral rights are not the same thing. In Korea and many other jurisdictions, an author retains moral rights — the right to be credited, the right to decide on first publication, and the right to object to distortions of the work — even after the economic rights have been licensed away. These rights are personal to the author and, in Korea, cannot simply be bought out or transferred. You can see the attribution right at work in the credit line of almost any adapted title, where the original novelist, the webtoon artist, and the adapting writer are all named together. And the integrity right is why a translation cannot quietly rewrite an ending, or an adaptation silently alter a work, without the author's say. A responsible licence respects these rights rather than assuming they disappear at signing. This is how we read every title we represent — a Korean picture book, a literary novel, a Thai thriller — not as a thing to be owned, but as a structured position to be understood: territory by territory, language by language, format by format, with the author's moral rights held intact throughout. When several mandates overlap, we resolve them in order, from the specific to the general: what the title's own contract says comes before a collection-level arrangement, which comes before a broader partner mandate. It is the discipline behind our catalogue, and it is the reason we are starting this column. Copyright is not complicated because it is obscure. It is precise because it has to be — and precision, read on the author's behalf, is what lets a story travel safely. Copyright & Technology offers general information about publishing rights and copyright and is not legal advice. Specifics vary by jurisdiction and by contract. For decisions about a particular work, consult qualified counsel in the relevant market.

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Mongsil Books Mongsil Books is a Seoul-based publisher at the forefront of Korea’s genre fiction renaissance, specializing in speculative horror, crime, and young adult fantasy. Its curated catalog spans shamanic horror, supernatural mystery, dystopian fiction, and queer coming-of-age stories. Featuring acclaimed authors such as Jeon Gunwoo, Park Hae-ro, and Kim Jae-hee, Mongsil Books presents bold, award-winning works with strong international appeal. Its distinctive storytelling makes the publisher an ideal partner for global publishers and content producers seeking fresh Korean genre IP. Titles Salon de Holmes When police fail to stop a predator stalking their apartment complex, four overlooked housewives become detectives—and discover that reclaiming their identities may be as dangerous as catching a killer. View Details Ghost’s Life Records A directionless man is murdered and returns as a powerless ghost, only to find purpose helping the living while racing to solve his own death before his last family ties disappear. View Details Sunlight Phobia After an elevator accident leaves a pilot terrified of sunlight, hypnotherapy unlocks childhood memories he erased to survive—and reveals someone from that darkness has been waiting for him. View Details Bookstore Detective Yoo Dong-in: The Beginning A bookstore curator who dreams of writing mysteries becomes the reluctant partner of a police detective, turning Seoul’s everyday crimes into cases solved through books, instinct, and irresistible odd-couple chemistry. View Details Bookstore Detective Yoo Dong-in 2: Returns A bookseller and detective reunite for four headline-ready mysteries, but their hardest case may be the attraction neither can solve while their investigative partnership grows dangerously close. View Details Amelia and the Four Jewels When a student’s death at Korea’s only magic school is ruled suicide, her four friends hunt for legendary jewels—and uncover black magic, betrayal, and a conspiracy rooted in the school itself. View Details Amelia and the Legendary Beasts Peace at Amelia Magic School ends when a transfer student revives forbidden magic, forcing four young mages and legendary creatures into a battle against a power thought destroyed. View Details Novice Detective Gil Eun-mok A novice nun returns to a drowned refugee district to investigate five apparent suicides—and discovers that the people abandoned by society may be dying for a reason no one in the Megacity wants exposed. View Details Dangerous Toy When an intern is blamed for mysterious patient deaths, he begins pulling at the threads of a hospital conspiracy—and discovers that medicine itself has become someone’s most dangerous weapon. View Details Scar: The Truth of Black Shadows A disgraced ex-detective searches for a missing girl through the dark web, only to uncover a digital exploitation network that turns his last chance at redemption into a fight against invisible predators. View Details Seopju When a cursed spirit possesses a bullied teacher and her tormentors begin dying, a detective must decide whether he is hunting a murderer—or something ancient that has finally awakened. View Details The Woman Who Swallowed a Flower When a professional seducer becomes the prime suspect in a grotesque murder, a rookie profiler enters the hidden economy of romance scams—and discovers someone has turned manipulation into a killing method. View Details Detectives of Joseon: Missing Tile When sacred royal roof tiles vanish, two rival Joseon officers are forced into an uneasy partnership—and discover that a seemingly minor theft is connected to murder, power, and secrets reaching far beyond their jurisdictions. View Details Beyond Memory When the remains of three children surface ten years after they vanished, a veteran journalist reopens the cold case—and uncovers a second death that suggests the truth was never lost, only buried. View Details Diary of Ruin After a student is found murdered, investigators discover a diary written by one of two boys with the same name—one bully, one victim—and must determine which life was truly heading toward ruin. View Details In Mourning for This Miserable Life At a clinic where people freeze themselves to escape impossible lives, a technician, his secretive fiancée, a relentless journalist, and a man awakening after fifty years discover that every second chance preserves a debt to the past. View Details

When the Machine Reads Your Book 2026.08.16 Insight AI, COPYRIGHT & NEW TECH /news/when-the-machine-reads-your-book Global 6 MIN CO.MINT Editorial AI has become a new party at every rights table. Here is what the courts have settled, what they haven't, and — from Naver Webtoon's studios to the EU's disclosure rules — what it means for the people whose stories are being learned from. https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/ publications/ce8eaa5f/ai-in-litigation-series-an-update- on-ai-copyright-cases-in-2026 https://www.stlpr.org/npr/2026-07-27/authors-have-mixed -feelings-about-the-1-5b-anthropic-copyright-infringement-ruling https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/22/1114874/ generative-ai-south-korea-webcomics/ https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/culture /2023/12/135_362478.html https://thenewpublishingstandard.com /2026/01/28/korea-ai-act-webtoon-creators/ https://manuscriptreport.com/data/ai-copyright-lawsuits AI & Copyright Every rights conversation now has a new party at the table. It does not sign contracts or attend book fairs, but it has read — or wants to read — almost everything. The large language models behind today's AI were trained on vast bodies of text and image, and a great deal of that material was made by the authors and artists that agencies like ours represent. What that means for copyright is still being worked out, in courtrooms and negotiating rooms at the same time. It is worth setting out plainly where things stand. Start with the question that dominated the headlines: is it lawful to train an AI on copyrighted work? Across 2025 and into 2026, courts in the United States began to draw a line — but not the one either side expected. In the most closely watched book case, a group of authors sued Anthropic; the court found that training a model on works the company had lawfully acquired could be a transformative, fair use, but that downloading and storing pirated copies to do it was not. The case then settled for roughly 1.5 billion dollars — an amount tied directly to the pirated sourcing, with reported payouts of around 3,000 dollars per work. A parallel suit against Meta reasoned similarly: training on the books could be defended as fair use, while claims tied to how the files were obtained were allowed to proceed. Around these sit a whole field of disputes — from the authors' class actions naming writers such as Sarah Silverman, to Getty Images against Stability AI over image training, to The New York Times against OpenAI. These rulings are narrow, several are under appeal, and courts elsewhere may reason differently. But the signal is clear: the decisive question turned out to be not whether a machine may learn from a work, but how that work was obtained. Provenance is now the threshold that matters. That threshold does not sit at the same height everywhere — and nowhere is the contrast sharper than within Asia. Japan's copyright law contains a broad exception permitting works to be used for information analysis, which extends to much AI training and has made the country notably permissive. Korea has moved the other way. After a wave of creator protest, the Korea Copyright Commission issued guidance in late 2023 urging AI developers to seek permission from rights holders before using their works for training, to state the purpose, scope, and duration of that use, and to pay fair compensation. Two neighbours, two philosophies — which is precisely why a rights position has to be read market by market rather than assumed from a single headline. A second question runs the other way. If a machine generates a story or an image on its own, can anyone own it? Here the answer has been consistent: copyright requires a human author, and courts have repeatedly declined to recognise an AI system as one — a position the top of the US judiciary let stand in 2026. The most instructive case for our field involved a comic. When an artist sought to register a graphic novel whose images were produced with an AI image generator, the US Copyright Office split the work in two: the human-written text and the human selection and arrangement of the panels were protected, but the individual AI-generated images were not. Purely machine-made output, with no meaningful human hand, tends to fall outside copyright altogether. The human contribution has not become less important in the age of AI. If anything, it has become the thing the law is looking for. None of this is abstract for the creators we represent, because in Asia the tension arrived first not in court but on the page — in front of readers. In May 2023, readers of the Naver Webtoon series The Knight King Returns with the Gods flooded it with one-star ratings after spotting that portions of the art had been refined with AI; the same series drew accusations that AI had been used to trace another studio's designs. The studio eventually pledged to stop, and re-drew episodes. The following month, webtoon artists mounted an online protest against a platform contract clause that required them to consent to their uploaded work being used as AI training data — an "AI-training right" quietly folded into the terms of publishing. This is exactly the kind of clause a rights agency exists to catch. It shows how a new use can hide inside old paperwork, and how covert use, once discovered, damages a title's standing with the very readers it depends on. Regulation, meanwhile, has moved faster than the courts — and it has moved toward disclosure. Under the European Union's AI rules taking full effect in August 2026, providers of general-purpose AI models must publish summaries of the data they trained on and set out how they comply with copyright: the first binding attempt to give rights holders real visibility into what a model has read, reaching any catalogue whose rights touch the European market. Korea, for its part, has passed an AI framework law requiring AI-generated content to be labelled, with machine-readable watermarks permitted for visual formats such as webtoons, after a grace period. The commercial logic is already visible: with a large share of Korean webtoons' overseas revenue coming from English-language readers, studios have found that "100% hand-drawn" can become a selling point, and that hiding AI use costs more trust than disclosing it ever would. While the courts sort out principle and regulators sort out disclosure, the market has been busy finding a price. The clear trend of the past two years is a shift from litigation toward licensing: rather than keep defending the claim that scraping was always fair, several AI companies have begun paying publishers for the right to use their text. The deals are uneven, still concentrated among large rights holders with well-cleared, long backlists, and by no means universal — much of the industry remains in court, and music-rights bodies such as Korea's KOMCA have stood up their own AI task forces. But a market for "training rights" is visibly forming, and that changes the calculation for everyone who owns a catalogue. So where does a rights agency stand? Four principles hold regardless of how the cases finally land. First, sourcing matters: any right we grant should never become a route to launder unlicensed or pirated use. Second, a new use needs its own named permission — an AI-training or AI-adaptation right is a distinct slice of the bundle, not something that rides silently inside a translation licence or a platform's standard terms. Third, disclosure is now part of the deal: where a work was made with AI assistance, saying so is becoming both a legal duty and a matter of reader trust. Fourth, the author's moral rights — attribution and the integrity of the work — do not dissolve because a machine is involved. A well-drafted contract already anticipates the machine at the table. The law will keep moving. Trials are on the calendar into next year, including what is reported to be the first jury trial in an AI-copyright case, and the picture will look different again by the time they conclude. What will not change is that someone has to read the rights carefully on the author's behalf, use by use, market by market. That is our work — machine or no machine. Copyright & Technology offers general information about publishing rights and copyright and is not legal advice. The legal position described here is evolving and varies by jurisdiction. For decisions about a specific work or contract, consult qualified counsel in the relevant market.