Manhwa
Manhwa draftsman Hyung Min-woo at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2005
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| Korean spelling | |
|---|---|
| Korean alphabet : | 만화 |
| Hanja : | 漫 畵 |
| Revised Romanization : | Manhwa |
| McCune-Reischauer : | Manhwa |
Manhwa ( Kor. 만화 'comic') is the common name in the western world for comics from South Korea . In Korean , the term is generally used for both Japanese manga and comics. If works by Korean authors are explicitly mentioned, the term 한국 만화 ( Hanguk Manhwa "Korean comic") is used. The digital counterpart to Manhwa are webtoons .
historical development
The origins of the Manhwa lie in classical Chinese art . Buddhist monks drew woodcuts that served to make religious guidelines known to the population (for example, the Korean woodcut Bomyeongsiudo from the 10th century is a Buddhist fable about a cow). These drawings as well as Korean writings, novels and poems influenced the first Manhwa.
The Korean daily Daehan Minbo , founded in 1909, featured a forerunner to today's Manhwa series on the front page, and other newspapers began publishing short satirical and humorous comic strips in the 1920s. However, these had to be stopped at the end of the 1920s under pressure from the General Government of Chosens .
In the course of the division into North and South Korea after the Second World War and the outbreak of the Korean War , in the early 1950s, in addition to Manhwa for children ( Ddakji Manhwa or Ddegi Manhwa ), primarily Propaganda Manhwa appeared. A subsequent short Manhwa boom was already severely restricted by the new military government in the mid-1960s, after which the majority of the published Manhwa consisted mainly of child-friendly, funny stories ( Myung Rang Manhwa ) and historical dramas for the late 1970s Adults. The Korean draftsmen were also inspired by the drawing techniques of Japanese manga artists , even though the importation of Japanese cultural goods was officially prohibited until 1998.
Before the democratization of South Korea in 1987 , comics were viewed as one of the "six evils of Korean society" and were repeatedly confiscated.
In the 1990s , Manhwa became popular in other East Asian countries. The leap to the West was made around the turn of the millennium, when the international manga boom in Europe and the USA began to attract increasing attention to South Korean productions. Manhwa's share of the US comic market is now estimated to be around eight percent. The Korea Culture and Content Agency (KOCCA), founded as a separate department of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, supports the international exports of Manhwa on behalf of the South Korean government with an annual budget of around one million US dollars.
Meaning in South Korea
In contrast to Japanese manga , Manhwa are read from left to right, as this also corresponds to the Korean reading direction.
Genres
Similar to Manga, the Manhwa have developed subdivisions for different target groups over time: Sunjeong Manhwa are aimed at girls (similar to Shōjo in Manga), Sonyeon Manhwa are intended for boys (see Shōnen ) and Seongin - Manhwa for adult men and women.
The comic market in South Korea
According to official figures, a total of 9177 different comic series were published in South Korea by 2001. 56% of these titles were from South Korean cartoonists, the remaining 44% were dominated by Japanese manga series, followed by Chinese Manhua . American and European comic series have also enjoyed increasing popularity since the late 1990s, especially among younger South Koreans.
Comics represented 35.9% of all South Korean printed matter in 2001. The total number of all comics printed in South Korea in 2001 was about 42 million copies, of which Manhwa made up 38%.
The South Korean comic industry uses distribution channels that are largely separate from the normal book trade. About three quarters of all comics printed in South Korea are not sold either, but can be borrowed from specialized private bookshops ( Manhwabang ) and read on site. Established around the mid-1950s, the number of Manhwabang in South Korea rose to around 15,000 by the late 1980s, but fell to around 5,000 in the 1990s. There are currently around 10,000 Manhwabang.
Webtoon
Online Manhwa or the Korean webcomics are called Webtoon ( 웹툰 , weptun ). These differ from other webcomic types mainly through their vertical arrangement of the panels without individual pages, i.e. H. a continuous, non-breaking reading direction from top to bottom. Well-known Webtoon series are Tower of God , Noblesse and Girls of the Wild’s . A well-known one-piece webtoon is the horror story Bongcheon-dong Ghost .
Manhwa in Germany
The first Manhwa in German-speaking countries was the Seongin series Zombie Hunter by Yang Kyung-il and Youn In-wan and was published by Planet Manga from September 2002 , although it was still translated from Japanese and licensed through a Japanese publisher. This was followed by the Island series on Planet Manhwa by the same team of authors, and in 2003 Egmont Manga & Anime released the Under the Glassmoon series by Ko Ya-seong .
Since then, around 30 Manhwa series have appeared in German-speaking countries, in addition to Planet Manhwa and Egmont Manga & Anime, also by Achterbahn and TOKYOPOP . Manhwa are particularly successful for girls like Demon Diary , but the implementation of the Warcraft computer game series also achieved high circulation figures.
literature
- Frankfurter Rundschau : The Manhwas are on the loose! Korean comics offer a wonderful mix of different style elements - is this what the popular culture of the future will look like? from October 20, 2005.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Bong-Chon Dong Ghost. In: Know Your Meme. Retrieved October 19, 2016 .
- ↑ Bongcheon-dong Ghost. In: Naver Manhwa. September 17, 2011, accessed October 19, 2016 .