South Korea's two major online bookstores said Thursday their sites briefly crashed due to high traffic soon after homegrown author Han Kang was announced as the winner of the Nobel Prize in literature.

"We fielded complaints that people weren't able to get on our website, and when they did, pages were slow to load," an official at Kyobo Book Centre said. "Since we did not anticipate Han Kang winning the award, we don't have any stock of her books. We have contacted her publishers."

An official at Yes24, another major online bookshop, also said its consumers experienced difficulty reaching the site, though its mobile application was working well.

Kyobo's main shop in Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, set up a special corner dedicated to Han, with copies of her novels arranged on a table in front of a sign showing, "2024 Nobel Prize in literature."

On Kyobo's website, Han's books occupied the first nine of the 10 spots on the real-time bestseller rankings, though many of them had been out of stock as of Thursday night. (Yonhap)