Starfield Library

In a shopping mall, almost nobody looks up.

A shopper's eyes stay level: signs, mannequins, price tags, shop windows. The whole space is designed for exactly that line of sight. People can walk from one shop to the next for hours and never once glance at the ceiling.

In the middle of COEX Mall in Seoul, there is one spot that makes people look up.

They look up, and then they usually stop where they are.

In front of them rise three walls of books. These are not shelves the size of the ones at home, or in a school library. The shelves here are 13 meters tall, as tall as a four-story building, and they hold books from the floor to the very top. All three stand in an atrium of about 2,800 square meters. The atrium opens up through two floors, so the books can be seen from either level.

This place is Starfield Library. In Korean it is called Byeolmadang. It opened in 2017.

Inside are more than 50,000 books in Korean and English. There are also about 600 magazine titles and a collection of e-books.

One more fact shows just how strange this place is. COEX Mall lies almost entirely underground. It is not a parking basement. It is an entire shopping complex of about 154,000 square meters, and almost all of it sits on a single underground floor. It is the largest underground shopping mall in the world. It opened in 2000 and connects directly to two subway stations. There is even an aquarium inside.

So the library starts down on that underground floor and rises all the way to ground level, where a great glass roof lets daylight pour in. The space was once the mall's central atrium. In 2017, walls of books 13 meters high were raised there, so that anyone standing below would have something to look up at.

And now comes the most surprising detail.

It costs nothing. There is no library card. There is no membership to sign up for. Nobody has to buy a drink at a counter to earn a seat. Anyone passing by can pull down a book, find a place to sit, and read until they have had enough.

This is the most central spot in one of the biggest shopping centers in Seoul, a place any brand would pay a great deal to have. And someone filled it with a thing that sells nothing at all.

A shopping mall exists to sell. Every square meter of it is counted in money. Yet the company that runs it, the Shinsegae Group, took the most expensive part of the floor and built an open library there. It charges its readers nothing.

Why would they do that? The easy answer is that it draws in shoppers. True, that is part of it. But the method is still unusual. A mall can draw shoppers with a fountain, a giant Christmas tree, or a car on display in the lobby. All of these are cheaper and easier to look after than 50,000 books.

They chose books. And they chose to leave those books in the hands of strangers, with nothing locked away.

The result is a rather special scene. All kinds of people are always sitting side by side there. Students review their lessons. Someone just off a shift sits and catches their breath. Old men and women read the newspaper. Travelers come from a dozen different countries. Shoppers with tired feet drop in for a rest, then pick up a book almost without thinking.

Travel guides often present this spot as a great place for photos, a grand backdrop to stand in front of. That is not wrong, and there is nothing to criticize in it. Everyone who comes takes a picture.

But taking a picture and then simply leaving would be a bit of a shame.

The thing worth seeing here is not the wall of books 13 meters high. That is only the part that is easy to notice. What is worth seeing is the people sitting at the foot of that wall. They buy nothing and pay nothing. Nobody asks them anything, and they may stay there as long as they like.

Look up, and there are books from the floor to the very top. Look down, and there are people sitting and reading. And all around, only a few steps away, the shops keep their lights on and wait for customers.

Some people stop at the three walls of books instead of heading straight for the shops. They look up once and take it all in. Then they lower their eyes and take down any book within reach, even one they cannot read a word of. They sit on the steps, open it, and stay.

They buy nothing. That is exactly what this place was built to allow.