South Korean comic exhibition opened at Grand Café │ Szegedify

A South Korean comic exhibition opened at Grand Café in Szeged on Thursday, February 8, 2024. The opening featured a talk with the curator of the exhibition, manhwa and webtoon artist Shin Myeong Hwan.

The Szeged exhibition featuring the works of six internationally recognized South Korean comic creators is a smaller part of the manhwa exhibition held at the Korean Cultural Center in Budapest between September 29, 2023, and January 31, 2024.

Upon arrival at the café, guests were greeted with presents from the Korean Cultural Center: a book containing the full material of the original exhibition in Budapest, and some presents related to the exhibited comics. South Korean comic books were on display too. The roundtable talk — an event of Grand Café's comic club — was led by Zoltán Ádám Szabó, and was centered around the history of manhwa, the future of South Korean comics, and the possibilities of artistic exchanges.

Shin Myeong Hwan is the former deputy executive director of the Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival (SICAF), currently the head of the Korean Comics Webtoon Society, cartoonist, illustrator, and webtoon instructor at Dongguk University. The goal of his self-founded company is to embrace Korean manhwa authors, and curate and present their works on an international level.

In his introduction, Shin Myeong Hwan explained that he was the curator of the exhibition "The World of Korean Comics, Manhwa" held at the Korean Cultural Center in Budapest, at the opening of which the creators themselves were present. A part of this exhibition has now been brought to the Grand Café in Szeged.

Shin, who originally graduated as an architect, draws comics himself in addition to his curatorial and manhwa promotion work. During his presentation, we got to know his relationship with comics going back to his childhood, and we also gained insight into the development of his career. We got to know his first work on an untended soccer field, as well as his main works.

As he said, one of his first webtoons — about snowmen "turning" into ice cream in the spring — was uploaded to one of the easily accessible online platforms when webtoons were just starting to appear. In addition to comics and webtoons, Shin also wrote children's stories.

Shin's work, just like the manhwa and webtoons in general, also deals with South Korean life and the most burning issues of society. During the presentation, we also got to know some of his installations, for example, the one reflecting on the time when a large number of suicide cases happened among South Korean youth.

Further into the presentation, the curator guided us through the history of manhwa, dating back to 1909. This is the date when a drawing, resembling today's political cartoons, was first published in the Korean newspaper Daehan Minbo. Such pictorial content began to appear in series in other magazines and newspapers, gradually became popular, and over time began to take on a more uniform form — these were called "illustrations", "fountain pen photographs" and "picture stories".

As the English term comics in the West, manhwa in South Korea refers to popular pictorial content focused on humor or entertainment, including the Korean digital comic, webtoon. The term graphic novel refers to authored, often realistic, stories with excellent graphic and literary value. The line between the different genres is often blurred.

Among the works exhibited at the Grand Café in Szeged are comics that were published as books after being serialized as webtoons, and vice versa. Regardless of the medium in which the stories were published, they are all considered manhwas, i.e. specifically Korean comics.

The over 1,5-hour long talk ended with several questions from the audience, regarding the different genres, publication and exchange opportunities for both Hungarian and Korean artists. In his finishing thoughts, Shin Myeong Hwan emphasized the importance of artist exchange, as a means of cultural exchange between two countries, in this case between Hungary and South Korea.

Manhwa artists and their works exhibited at Grand Café Szeged

The works of six internationally recognized South Korean comic creators — Sooshinji, Ma Yeongshin, Ancco, Lee Yoonhee, Ha Minseok, and Hong Yeonsik — are on display at the manhwa exhibition in Szeged.

Ha Minseok's children's comics bring the witty, imaginative, and adventurous world of classic Korean children's comics close, but still in a unique, authorial style. The comics by Lee Yoonhee, Ancco, Hong Yeonsik, and Ma Yeongshin are outstanding in both illustration and text. The characteristics of the teen comic genre, action, martial arts, romance, and fantasy elements all appear in these works. Sooshinji's Sarin comic appeared serially on the author's social media platforms, instead of the webtoon platforms, and quickly gained popularity.

Ha Minseok's The Great Adventure of Detective Khan, and Lee Yoonhee's Summer at Thirteen both feature children, and were written for children. Ha's comic brings us the witty, imaginative, and adventurous world of classic Korean children's comics, while Lee's comic offers a glimpse into the daily life and mental functioning of a teenager through charming writing techniques.

Ancco's Bad Friends and Hong Yeonsik's Uncomfortably Happily are autobiographical fictions. Ancco's novel tells the stories of teenage friends. Its protagonists find themselves in chaotic and dark situations, facing violence, and physical and mental abuse committed by individuals or the community. The writer delicately depicts the feeling of being lost, the problems of adolescence, and its social implications, for which she received serious recognition both in South Korea and internationally. Hong's story, based on his life, about a comic book artist couple who leave the bustling city life and move to the countryside, generates thoughts about real values and environmental issues.

Sooshinji's Sarin and Ma Yeongshin's Moms are two comics dealing with the situation of Korean women today. Sooshinji divided the challenges of a newly married woman into a series and shared it on her social media account, gaining great popularity and more than six hundred thousand followers in a short time. It portrays the newlywed woman in the patriarchal family culture, and sheds light on the sensitive points of Korean society, encouraging, especially Korean readers, to question these entrenched relationship systems themselves.

Ma Yeongshin's comic, Moms, tells the story of the almost invisible members of Korean society, a divorced woman in her sixties, and a mother who works as a cleaner. The author, who interviewed his mother, vividly tells about how his characters experienced love, infidelity, betrayal, and the world of work as Korean women. The comic received very favorable reviews both at home and abroad, among others, it won the Harvey Award, considered the Oscar of the comic book world, in the category of best international work.

The exhibition can be visited free of charge until March 28, during the opening hours of Grand Café.