European markets in as late as 2002, but exports have rapidly increased. Daiwon Culture Industry Inc. (Daiwon CI), the nation’s biggest comic book publisher, began to export its products to Europe in 2002 and the export amount has significantly increased every year, to 370 million won (US$400,000) in 2004 and 620 million won (US$668,000) in 2006. According to the industry, other important comic book publishing houses, including Haksan Pub Co., have also increased exports to Europe.
For decades, world leaders have accused the communist regime of North Korea of running drugs, defrauding insurance companies and counterfeiting US dollars. It’s also one of the few governments in the world that is known to so openly sponsor mafia-like operations.
But beneath Kim Jong-il’s sinister regime of Mafiosos, the Dear Leader has a heartier side: he sells comic books and animation to raise government funds—and to brainwash the masses.
Every year, a state-owned publishing house releases several cartoons (called geurim-chaek in North Korea), many of which are smuggled across the Chinese border and, sometimes, mysteriously end up in university libraries in the United States.
The books are designed to instill the Juche philosophy of Kim Il-sung (the ‘father’ of North Korea)—radical self-reliance of the state. The plots brim with propaganda, featuring scheming capitalists from the United States and Japan who create dilemmas for naïve North Korean characters.
‘These books are mostly geared toward children, unlike South Korean comic books [manhwa], which are often aimed at adults,’ says Park Jae-dong, one of South Korea’s most famous cartoonists who once drew for the Hankoryeh, a left-leaning newspaper in Seoul.
In almost every cartoon, those who stay faithful to Juche have happy endings; the others aren’t so lucky.
The villains fit outlandish stereotypes. Americans are usually depicted with big noses, German Nazis as wearing swastikas and Japanese with glasses and buck teeth.
Overseas export markets have been expanded to a number of countries, such as Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia, from France, where comic strips and longer graphic novels are being translated and published at a growing rate.
Casterman, one of the largest comic book publishers in France, published Park Kun-woong’s ‘‘Flower’’ and ‘‘Massacre at Nogunri’’ last year, while this year, French company Picquier published ‘‘Ancco’s Picture Diary’’ (‘‘Jindol et Moi’’ in French), written by Choi Gyeong-jin, who goes by the pen name Ancco.
Because they are just as attractive, from a commercial perspective, as the most popular Japanese comics, an industry expert said. Korean comics have also gained a reputation in Europe for showcasing the artist’s unique aesthetic, said the expert. In addition, domestic writers begun to diversify their marketing strategies by holding book signings for local comic book fans, he said.
Europe occupies up to 40 percent of the overall export market for South Korean comic books, the industry estimates, becoming the biggest market, followed by the U.S. and Asia with 30 percent each. ‘‘If the nation’s comic books can enter European markets, they will easily be able to advance into other markets, like those in Latin America, thanks to language advantage. Therefore, we are concentrating our efforts on strategically expanding exports to Europe,’’ said Oh Tae-yeop of Daiwon CI. The Korea Content Information System’s (KOCCA) data shows that Korea’s comic book export total amounted to about 3 billion won (US$3.26 million) in 2005.
In The Secret of Frequency A, published in 1994, a group of North Korean teenagers save an unnamed African country from a strange plague, says Heinz Insu Fenkl, an expert on North Korean comics at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz.
With the help of their professor, the kids foil the plans of imperialist scientists from the US and Japan, who have been developing biological weapons.
‘The key scene is when the North Korean scientist finds a way to turn a symbol of Biblical plague, locusts, into fertilizer by making them self-destruct,’ Fenkl says. ‘I found this one especially interesting because it was published in 1994, which would have been during the height of the drought and famine in the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea].’
‘It’s a sort of North Korean “Hardy Boys” story,’ he adds, referring to the 80-year-running US serial about two boys who fight crime in their suburb.
Another comic book, The Spunky Raccoon, is about a raccoon who always ends up in mischief, and learns the lessons of Juche along the way. In some episodes, a jackal tricks the raccoon and takes advantage of his compassion. In others, the raccoon learns to overcome his laziness to help the collective of other raccoons, and also learns to share.
But the newer books—especially those published after 2000—tend to be historical military thrillers. They draw on sensational espionage tales from the Korean War (known in North Korea as the ‘Victorious Fatherland Liberation War’) in 1950-53, and from World War II.
The experts, however, noted that Korea’s comic book industry still has a long way to go. Above all, Korean comics haven’t yet inspired the kind of mania displayed by fans of Japanese comics. According to the experts, Korea should work in concert with other genres, like animation, in order to support wider distribution of Korean comic books.
