At least 22 Korean books, including Han Kang's, appear on Anthropic's $1.5B settlement eligibility list

What happened

A review of Anthropic's copyright-settlement website published October 16, 2026 found at least 22 books by 15 Korean authors among the 482,460 works eligible for compensation under Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement of the Bartz class action. The works include three books by Nobel laureate Han Kang ("Human Acts," "The Vegetarian," "The White Book"), four by Kim Young-ha including "Your Republic Is Calling You," three by Shin Kyung-sook including "Please Look After Mom," plus works by Hwang Sok-yong and Kim Ae-ran.

Claims process and industry response

• The Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea) identified 21 English-translated works by Korean authors on the eligibility list and notified the authors, giving them a route to file compensation claims (about $3,000 per work, which may be divided among multiple rights holders).
• The Korean Publishers Association issued an appeal on October 16 calling for fair compensation, training-data transparency, and a permission-based use principle.
• Inclusion on the list establishes eligibility to claim, not a finding that a given book trained a commercially released Claude model.
• The report also notes that after the piracy controversy, Anthropic bought more than 300,000 Korean-language books from Korean distributor Woongjin Booksen under its book-scanning program ("Project Panama"), and that Deborah Smith, the English translator of "The Vegetarian," is listed as a registered copyright holder on the settlement site — raising the question of who receives the compensation offer.

Status

The $1.5 billion Bartz settlement received final court approval July 20, 2026; compensation claims had been filed for 440,490 of the 482,460 eligible works (91.3%) as of April 16. Claims about AI outputs and future conduct remain available under the settlement's scope.