ABSTRACT:

Scribbling Colonial History: Ko U-yŏng, Hŏ Yŏng-man and
the Ambivalence of Modern Korean Identity in Narrative Comics
Kyu Hyun Kim (University of California, Davis)

This paper examines evolution of comic book as a popular art as well as a serious art in the postwar high-growth period of Korean history (1953-1988), with the special attention paid to the changing perception of modern Korean history, especially colonial period Korea, reflected in select works. Given the paucity of primary sources and lack of secondary research, it was decided to limit the scope of investigation to a group of commercially successful narrative comics or graphic literature over other genres or types of comic work, such as newspaper cartoons in the mainstream news media, "propaganda" cartoons produced by North and South Korea during the Korean War and experimental or "underground" comics with strong political or artistic intent. Concrete analyses will be clustered around the works of two major comic artists: Ko U-yŏng (1938-2005) and Hŏ Yŏng-man (1947-), both of whom have not only remained the most successful Korean comic artists for the last three decades of twentieth century, but also are considered great stylistic innovators and superb storytellers who had contributed greatly to the flourishing of adult graphic literature. Throughout the present paper, I seek to explore their treatment of Korea's colonial history and the complex interactions of the signs of ethnicity, nation and cultural identity, sometimes resulting in the striking displays of ambivalence and implosion, found in their transitory masterpieces such as The Grand Ambition (1975-1977) and Maiden Mask (1974).

Kyu Hyun Kim is Associate Professor of Japanese and Korean History at University of California, Davis. He has received a PhD in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard University specializing in modern Japanese history, and has since been an Edwin O. Reischauer Postdoctoral Fellow and a recipient of the Japan Society for Promotion of Science Grant. He is the author of The Age of Visions and Arguments: Parliamentarianism and the National Public Sphere in Early Meiji Japan (Harvard East Asia Center Publication, 2009), in which he examines the development of parliamentarian and constitutional movement in late 1870s and early 1880s, against the view that Japan's modernization has been primarily a state-directed affair. He is currently working on the second book project, tentatively entitled Treasonous Patriots: Colonial Modernity, War Mobilization and the Problem of Identity in Korea. Kim has written articles on Japanese state-society relations, Korean colonial experience, Japanese popular culture and Korean cinema. He is Academic Adviser and Contributing Editor to www.koreanfilm.org, the oldest webpage devoted to the Korean cinema in existence.