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Consuming Japan Early Korean Girls Comic Book Artists’ Resistance and Empowerment

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Consuming Japan Early Korean Girls Comic Book Artists’ Resistance and Empowerment CHAPTER 6 CONSUMING JAPAN EARLY KOREAN GIRLS COMIC BOOK ARTISTS’ RESISTANCE AND EMPOWERMENT Kukhee Choo, National University of Singapore / University of Tokyo Kukhee Choo is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asian Research Institute, National University of Singapore and an Exchange Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo. INTRODUCTION The recent popularity of Japanese anime and manga in the global market has sparked a variety of academic research. In Japan, both media fall under the term kontentsu (‘content’), and the Japanese government passed the Content Industry Promotion Law bill in 2004 in order to ‘offi- cially’ promote anime and manga as a Japanese product globally.1 This change has come with the growth of the United States market since the mid-1990s. However, before the Japanese gov- ernment decided to support the anime and manga industries, there was a wave of Japanese products – which included music, television dramas, manga, anime and video games – popularly consumed in Asia throughout the 1990s (Iwabuchi 2002). South Korea (henceforth Korea) was no exception. Although the Korean government only officially allowed Japanese cultural products into the Korean market after 1998, a continuous backdoor for such products, mostly manga, had existed for many decades prior to Korea’s ‘open door’ policy. The Korean military government constantly tried to prevent the public from ‘expos- ure’ to Japanese products throughout the 1970s and 1980s due to a concern that they would corrupt Korean morals and sentiment. The primary concern arose from the colonial past: Koreans had a deep-rooted fear of Japanese cultural products as they reminded them of Japan’s Occupation. As if mocking the government’s effort, Japanese girls comic books (shōjo manga) were reprin- ted and reproduced in Korea throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, local artists either directly copied shōjo manga or imitated their visual stylistics and narratives. Following this trend was an explosive black market in Japanese comic books, regardless of genre, since the late 1980s that eventually led to the open-door policy in 1998. Kwok (1998: 188) explains that the deregu- lation of the publication industry in 1987 established a ‘solid framework of illegal copying’ for publishers. Yet most of the comic books that entered the Korean market after 1987 were boys’ comics from Japan. The initial wave of pirated Japanese comics from the 1970s, however, revolved around those for girls. In contrast to the extensive research on manga, comic book culture in Korea is an under- studied academic field. Literature on other Asian comic books has mostly focused on how Japanese manga have spread throughout the global market. Many studies have concentrated on fan culture, or feminist readings of texts, which are indeed important to understanding Japanese manga culture at large. Yet little research has been done on the implications of this vast distribution of Japanese manga on local productions elsewhere in Asia. Although many critical voices denigrate this ‘plagiarizing’ girls comic book culture in Korea of the 1970s and 1980s, this chapter suggests that Japanese shōjo manga may have presented Korean females with a new means of expression under a military government that restricted gender roles. This study will explore the ramifications 06.1 COMPLICATED CURRENTS: MEDIA FLOWS, SOFT POWER AND EAST ASIA (2010) MONASH UNIVERSITY EPRESS of Korea’s introduction to Japanese shōjo manga in the context of Korea’s gendered politics and a social milieu oppressive of women. In order to distinguish early Korean girls comic books, sunjeong manhwa (‘romance’ comic books), and their Japanese counterparts, shōjo manga, I will use both terms henceforward.2 POST-WAR KOREAN GIRLS COMIC BOOK CULTURE Korea’s authoritarian military regime from the 1960s onwards built itself and in turn shaped the country’s environment under the influence of Cold War rhetoric against communism. This process occurred at the expense of women, who were not viewed as equal citizens because men were thought to be the primary nation-builders and defenders. Due to this social milieu, not only were women alienated from politics, but they lacked official outlets to have their voices heard. This study attempts to illustrate how Korea’s subaltern women tried to find an outlet for their voices within the rigid social constraints imposed under the military regime through unofficial routes. The illegal import of Japanese comic books – especially such gendered ones as the shōjo manga Candy Candy (1975) – into the Korean market and the surge that it precipitated not only popularized the girls comic book genre in Korea, but also provided a broader platform for females to express their creative desires; underground artists inspired by shōjo manga started to emerge during the early 1980s. Though these women might have tried to ‘voice’ themselves, their attempt has been undermined in Korean scholarship on comic books. Korean girls comic book culture is often criticized for ‘mindlessly’ imitating Japanese shōjo manga (e.g. Son 1998: 297). Spivak, in a vastly different context, has argued that Western interpretations of Sati, the widow-burning practice in India, undermine the actual voices and desires of the widows who burn themselves, thus erasing their subjectivity (Spivak 1988). Similarly, the underground Korean female comic book artists’ struggle has suffered from misinterpretation. Before Japanese shōjo manga were introduced to Korea on a massive scale in the mid-1970s, a few local artists were already producing comic books for girls. Though male, Kim Jeong-pa, Choe Sang-rok, Jo Won-gi, and Kwon Yeong-seop were all considered pioneers of the genre. According to a Hankyoreh 21 article, during the 1950s Korea saw the emergence of comic book narratives largely divided into three genres: action, cheerful/humourous (myeongrang), and family. Sunjeong manhwa emerged out of the family genre, and provided an alternative to the vastly popular boy-centred genres.3 Thus, when shōjo manga entered the Korean market during the 1970s, they were often perceived as of Korean origin by readers and naturally fell under the umbrella of sunjeong manhwa rather than Ilbon manhwa (the Korean term for ‘Japanese’ comic books). In the 1960s, female artists started to emerge within the sunjeong manhwa scene. These artists include Eom Hee-ja, Min Ae-ni, and Song Sun-hee, who became so popular that publishers limited the print runs of their work with the claim that their success was creating a sales imbalance within the market (Park 2000: 53). The narrative sensibility of these artists, perceived as more ‘feminine’ than that of male artists, quenched the thirst of female readers, and thus their work may be considered the ‘true’ beginning of sunjeong manhwa.4 Although the work these artists produced was viewed as free of Japanese influence, Min Ae- ni has noted that when she started drawing comics during the early 1960s, there was already a plethora of copied Japanese titles in the market that influenced her drawing style (Park 2000: 58). This influence is a spill-over effect of the colonial period. Not only were most comic books CONSUMING JAPAN CHAPTER 6 06.2 published in Japan consumed on the Korean peninsula as well, but Korean artists also travelled to Japan to study drawing comics (Choe 1995: 82–83). Therefore, it is hardly surprising that Korean artists of the 1950s and 1960s continued to experience Japanese influence in their visual style. In addition, the dichotomous narrative structure of ‘good versus evil’ in Japanese shōjo manga affected both Korean readers and artists. Within these narratives, Korean readers may have found solace from the menial state of postwar society. Korean sunjeong manhwa created by Min Ae-ni and Eom Hee-ja often depicted class struggle between the rich and poor and the contrast between urban and rural spaces; their female protagonists would typically find happiness after enduring hardship. Such storylines became prevalent owing to the military government’s control of printed material (Park 2000: 56). Cultural productions for and by women were often censored according to Confucian social values: skirts should not rise above the knees, flamboyant jewellery should not be worn, and glamorous lifestyles were not to be depicted without punish- ment. Therefore, the depiction of virtuous, humble women became a generic formula for sunjeong manhwa. This political milieu may explain why the shōjo manga Candy Candy, though of Japanese origin, was accepted in Korea so easily. Created by Igarashi Yumiko in 1975, it depicts an orphan girl who eventually finds love, money and happiness through her kind and enduring heart. Candy, as a female protagonist, fits perfectly the military era profile for a poor girl enduring social hardship. Korean readers readily identified with Candy, having already become familiar with the tear-jerker narratives of 1960s sunjeong manhwa such as Watanabe Masako’s Glass Castle (1969), another example of the nice-girl-triumphantly-finding-happiness genre that held immense popularity among Korean readers. The storyline focuses on the love, betrayal, and forgiveness of two sisters. Traditional Korean literature and literature of the colonial period also favoured allegories of good-versus-evil (Shin 2001: 250), a dichotomous narrative structure that the mass- printed comic book culture strengthened among younger audiences and in popular media after the Korean War throughout the 1960s. Similarly, Korean readers during the 1970s may have been attracted to pirated shōjo manga because their narratives often portrayed females who endure hardship but eventually achieve happiness. Such formulae are still deeply embedded within various media in Korea and continue even in recent Korean television dramas such as Glass Shoes (2002), where an ‘evil’ sister switches her birth certificate with the ‘good’ sister in order to live as a wealthy heiress. COMIC BOOK ROOMS (MANHWABANG) The pirated, illegal shōjo manga were not sold at regular book stores, since the distribution system for comic books in Korea was strictly limited to manhwabang (comic book rooms), small estab- lishments where customers could pay to read.
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