The Politics of Kang Full's Webcomic, 26 Years

26, 27, 28, 29 … Years: the Politics of Kang Full’s Webcomic, 26 years Martin Petersen (University of Copenhagen) With departure in the South Korean manhwa artist Kang Do-young’s (artist name: Kang Full) webcomic 26 Years (2006), this paper examines the emergence of the political webcomic and its reception in on- and off-line media. Presenting itself as faction, 26 Years deals with the aftermath of the 1980 Kwangju Uprising. The comic envisions a radical fictional response to this contested and traumatized part of contemporary South Korean social history: the planning and attempted assassination in 2006 of former President, Chun Doo-hwan by a group of victims of the uprising. Not least to the many readers familiar with Kang Full through his vastly popular love-story webcomics Love Story (2003) and Fool (2004), 26 Years is a drastic departure, if not in its humanistic emphasis on the overcoming of inter-personal and societal barriers, then in the violent, uncompromising approach to its overcoming. In response to the serialization of 26 Years on Daum Media ’s comic portal, a large number of users left replies displayed below each uploaded chapter. Here and in a plethora of political web- forums readers reflected on the political and juridical aftermath of the Kwangju Uprising, demanding a re-evaluation of the event, but also debated the potentials and pitfalls of pop culture as political manifestation – debates which eventually also reached the conventional media. Unlike Kang Full’s other webcomics being adapted for cinema, however, the scheduled film-project 29 Years (2009) ultimately was cancelled. Central questions raised by 26 years and its reception are thus how the politicised webcomic as pop culture phenomena is related with the appearance of new forms of protest within social movements, how comic artists exercise agency in this context, and, in a wider perspective, how pop-culture with political contents are received in current South Korean society. Approaching these questions this chapter presents a close reading of Kang Full’s comic with focus on his factional approach to the Kwangju Uprising, and the interactive character of the media. The close reading is contextualized through interviews with Kang Full on 26 Years and 29 Years as well as through an examination of Kang Full’s wider work, in particular his participation in various so-called webtoon relays (e.g. ‘Mad Cow Relay’ (2008)) countering conservative politics in South Korea. Further, drawing on discourse analysis of literary and media representations of the Kwangju Uprising, reception analysis of user responses in Daum Media and other on-line media, the paper attempts to map the historical emergence of the political webcomic, and discusses its impact and limitations as a vehicle of change in current South Korean civil society. The paper is part of an ongoing project in which the author takes a comparative approach to the politics of comics in the 21 st century in South Korea, North Korea and among Koreans in Japan. Martin Petersen has been working on issues of material culture, ethnographic collecting and cultural representations. “26, 27, 28, 29 … Years: the politics of Kang Full’s webcomic, 26 years ” is part of an ongoing project in which he takes a comparative approach to the politics of comics in the 21 st century in South Korea, North Korea and among Koreans in Japan. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Copenhagen in 2009 with his dissertation entitled Collecting Korean Shamanism – Biographies and Collecting Devices . 1 .

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