Yi Ki-ung, the initiator of the Paju Book City project, is the president of the Korean fine arts publisher Youlhwadang Publishers. Upset that the small and scattered nature of the Korean publishing industry resulted in high printing, binding, and distribution costs, and that the industry's obsolete distribution system left it with warehouses full of fine but unsold books, Yi began thinking about completely restructuring the publishing environment in 1989.
「坡州出版城」發起人李起雄，是韓國美術出版社「悅話堂」的總經理，1989 年他感嘆韓國出版社規模太小、分散各地，必須負擔沉重的印刷、裝訂、物流等後端成本，加上落後的發行系統，很多好書賣不出去，堆滿了出版社的倉庫，因而興起徹底改造大環境的念頭。