This study analyzes the cultural politics surrounding the books published in the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on the spaciality of large bookstores and the performativity of reading. It particularly examines how large bookstores, shaped by the knowledge systems of colonial modernity and gendered knowledge cultures, were represented as male elite-centered spaces. At the same time, it highlights how the free movement and engagement of general readers created a rupture in prevailing gender and labor practices surrounding knowledge. In 1979, Chongno Book Center expanded to 700 pyeong (one pyeong roughly equals 3.3 sq. meters), leading the era of large bookstores in the nation. By combining the models of university libraries and department stores, Chongno Book Center reproduced a gendered reading culture—"men reading books" and "women serving"—and and in doing so, created a specific spatial identity. Female clerks, assigned the role of "serving," acquired extensive knowledge of book classifications and locations, developing into skilled workers while internalizing readers’ performative acts. As a result, the gendered practice of reading which had centered on "books and women" began to fracture, and the clerks’ roles contributed to the redefinition of the meanings of both women and labor. This transformation reflects the agency of readers and workers who, through free movement, multi-layered interactions, and the archiving of knowledge within the space of large bookstores, sought to carry out independent roles. This paper explores how the intersection of knowledge, power, and gender in large bookstores during the 1970s and 1980s created conditions for the democratization of knowledge.