A famous room in a mall, and a weekday visit

Not long ago, the writer says, a photograph of shelves rising to the ceiling, packed with books, won a crowd of likes on social media. No date is given for that post, and none is added here. The room was Byeolmadang Library, inside COEX in Samseong-dong. Its scale looked, to many, like a scene from a Western film, and social media, the notes say, has brought a lot of visitors.

The writer went as well, on a weekday, and was surprised to find people there in some number. The place sits in a mall many already pass through, and it is very open, which, in this reading, makes a visit easy.

Even so, the writer does not think Byeolmadang is as rare as the photographs suggest. Care and money have clearly gone into the interior, but a library of the same scale or larger, the notes say, was also built at the former city hall, though fewer people have heard of it.

Jeongdok, Songpa, and libraries around the corner

Jeongdok Library does not feel as sleek as Byeolmadang, the writer says, but it occupies a former high school, so walking there can feel like walking a schoolyard. In Songpa, a children’s library is set up for infants through children about to leave elementary school. There is room to lie down with a book, or for a parent and child to read side by side, and the collection is meant to be strong for both.

The National Assembly Library and the National Library of Korea are named as nationally run, representative houses; the writer says there is no need to praise them further. If a large holding is not what you want, small, quiet rooms are, the notes say, scattered through the city, often carefully finished inside and out.

People are often surprised to hear that libraries run at the city, district and neighbourhood level. Many, even after years in a place, do not know there is one nearby, and many have never used any library but the one at school.

Falling visits, and a reading room that is not a library

Visits to libraries, the notes claim, are falling. No year is given for that trend, and none is added here. School libraries have long worried about numbers, and a neighbourhood library that even residents do not know can sit near closure.

National houses still draw people, the writer says, because the facilities are strong, and because books and theses published in the country are gathered there; one goes, if need be, simply to find a title. University students may bristle if someone says school-library users are few, thinking of fights over seats and of night study in a quiet room. Those people, the writer insists, are using a reading room, not a library. A true user, in this view, comes to read and to borrow.

In elementary, middle and high schools, where the library’s main work is still books, the number of students who actually use it is far too small for the size of the school. Next year’s budget for a wider collection often depends on those numbers. If only a few students come, the school will not invest; fixed costs remain, new-book money shrinks, and a room of old titles has even less appeal. University libraries, the notes add, face a threat to their identity; their distinctive work is academic information, though these notes keep to the lending of books.

The same Korean essay, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. A student essay on Byeolmadang Library at COEX in Samseong-dong, and on other Seoul libraries the writer has seen.
2. A social-media photograph and a claimed decline in visits, both undated in the notes and left that way.
3. Jeongdok Library, a children’s library in Songpa, the National Assembly Library, and the National Library of Korea, as the notes name them.

Last updated: 14 November 2026