tag Graphic novel

Time to Tell My Secret

A wound held inside for 9 years No, it’s time to tell my secret One day on her way back home from playing with her friends, Eun-seo is groped by a man on the subway—an event that reminds her of how she was molested once as a young child. It is a secret that she hasn’t been able to tell anyone for the past 9 years. Slowly, Eun-seo’s heart is weighed down by this secret that she cannot tell her friends or teacher. She even imagines seeking revenge on her assailant, but she has no idea who it was that assaulted her. Blaming herself for not running away and resenting her mother for not looking after her, Eun-seo plunges herself into ever-darkening thoughts. People around Eun-seo help her realize that it was not her fault. Finally, after a lot of consideration, Eun-seo tells her best friend Ji-yoon about her secret. Ji-yoon comforts Eun-seo by expressing anger towards Eun-seo’s assailant. But still Eun-seo’s worries are not completely quelled. Ji-yoon, afraid that Eun-seo might have some remaining physical side effects from the ordeal, suggests they go to the hospital together. Despite still being scared, Eun-seo can take her first courageous steps thanks to the sympathy and understanding of Ji-yoon.

Changbi Books, Changbi Books_Adults, Changbi Books_Adults > Graphic novel
Jin and jin

“The only thing we can do when life is painful Is sings songs together at the top of our lungs.” The worries and concerns of all of us who survive between life and death This omnibus comic book deals with two characters in different situations who must face and overcome death in their daily lives. Jin-ah is a girl without any social net who must do her utmost to survive, and Su-jin is a woman who cannot see how she will endure the remaining years of her life—two Jins of different ages and professions. This book explores the weight of having done everything one can do and the burden of moving on. While giving poetic expression to the daily lives of two ordinary people, the book calmly unravels the worries and concerns between life and death that everyone holds onto. Starting 8 years ago with their first joint work, In Between Seasons, Director Lee Dong-eun and comic book artist Jeong Yi-yong have developed a great partnership. Jin and Jin, which won the Grant for the Production of Diverse Comics in 2020, tells the story of two Korean woman who live lives backdropped against Korea’s many goshiwons, noraebangs, and restaurants. By depicting the emotions of young Jin-ah and middle-aged Su-jin, who each face new life and death in their respective lives, the book speaks to readers who face similar problems in their own lives. Jin and Jin refrains from romanticizing stark realities and instead faces them head on. The days that the two female protagonists live and endure are more touching and beautiful than any attempt at comforting because they are in touch with our reality.

Changbi Books, Changbi Books_Adults, Changbi Books_Adults > Graphic novel
The Smell of Swimming Pools

How do we become adults? This is the question that Yoon-sun Park attempts to answer in her new comic book, The Smell of Swimming Pools, which recounts the adolescent years of Min-sun, an “apartment kid” living in the outskirts of Seoul. Set in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Seoul during a period of rapid growth, this book recounts the coming-of-age story of eight-year-old Min-sun, a young girl who swims with her local sports center swimming team. This is an apartment-kid, comic-book version of the famous Korean Drama Reply 1988. In this comic, author Yoon-sun Park—who was invited twice in 2019 and 2020 to compete in the Angoulême International Comics Festival (the Cannes Film Festival of the comic book world)—lucidly depicts from a universal perspective the scenes from childhood that we all vaguely remember. Min-sun, an eight-year-old girl living in the outskirts of Seoul, is forced to join the swimming team at the nagging of her education-crazy, penny-pinching mother. Min-sun’s mother tells her to join the varsity swim team like her older sister, who is good at everything, but not giving it much effort, Min-sun is content with swimming on junior varsity. But Min-sun doesn’t mind. She’s not interested in such things. Existing at the bottom of the pecking order at both home and school, Min-sun’s days are as unpleasant as the smell of chlorine at the pool. Her butt gets exposed to bullies; her mother forces her to go to the swimming pool every day; and she has to suffer the ridicule of her friends who laugh at her because both her parents work. With chlorine blue, Yoon-sun Park both candidly depicts the coldhearted world of an eight-year-old and explores our adolescent years, in which we grew while hanging on for survival.

Changbi Books, Changbi Books_Adults, Changbi Books_Adults > Graphic novel
Subtly Thrilled!

‘Living could be boring, but living a day by day could be thrilled. This is a thrilling cartoon dealing with ordinary life, which readers will extremely be sympathized with while turning a page one by one.! This book presents the growing-up story of a female character, Eun-Geun, who goes to work while beginning her love relationship. The first chapter is about her ordinary life, the second chapter is about her love relationship, and the third chapter is about her thrilling moments at work place. In terms of realistically showing an ordinary life of single women in 20s and 30s, this book reminds us “Masdamiri”, however, it is much more cheerful and positive. At first, readers can easily read this cartoon, but at certain moment, readers tired of their own lives can be comforted and begin to love their ordinary but precious life while reading each passionate scenes and sentences. We all have experienced such moments! The best attractive point of this book, ‘Subtly Thrilled’, is the fact that all genders and generation from male to female, from the young to the old, can get sympathy from this book. The experience when we organized coins after cutting a fatty piggy bank, when we had a weird dream of someone we used to have crush on, and the experience when we were so excited and felt suddenly fine after leaving early from the work due to illness. While reading some personal events we used to go through in our ordinary life through some clear and cute cuts of illustrations, readers will be able to feel fun having a sympathy, thinking, ‘I also used to be like this.’ When we find out missing coins inside our pocket of winter jacket, it feels like we get an unexpected gift. When we succeed in preventing our cell phone from being broken while falling down to the ground by desperately trying to save, we are so thrilled getting power to live today. Through the main character, Eun-Geun, shouting, ‘I’m so thrilled!’ every day, readers can reflect on their own ‘thrilling moments’ they have experience without knowing, and can realize that their ordinary life are so lovely.

Changbi Books, Changbi Books_Adults, Changbi Books_Adults > Graphic novel
Hello

Warm-hearted greeting toward people who have lost their precious things A new book with its title of Hello, written by the author, ‘Bonjour Lune’, has finally been published. The author, ‘Bonjour Lune’’, is a well-known writer who has reputation of ‘the best achievement of Korea’s picture book genre, which has been escalated into the world-class level’, and also received the award at the 57th Korea Book Award. She is one of the most recognized writers in the country these days and has created this new book, Hello, by dealing with the life and death based on her unique imagination and warm-hearted world view. In this book, the life and death of Sausage Grandpa is presented in extremely controlled way of dialogues and boldly sensual way of images like poems along with the author’s unique sentiment. The author has created her works of literature, which is unique and moving. Amazing imagination toward the universe ‘In the wide universe, Sausage Grandpa met a small dog at a star.’ Hello is a story about Sausage Grandpa and his friend doggy in the background of wide universe, which is well presented just like a beautiful poem. The story begins at a certain star in the wide universe. The star where Sausage Grandpa is living has many things which are old and abandoned. Tea pots and cups, which look just like mother and children, analogue phones, which look like an old couple, as well as crayons which remind us of elementary school kids holding hands with their friends are all over the street in this book. These various characters live in this star with their own different stories.

Changbi Books, Changbi Books_Adults, Changbi Books_Children, Changbi Books_Children > Fiction_Age 10-13, Changbi Books_Children > Fiction_Age 6-8, Changbi Books_Children > Fiction_Age 8-10, Changbi Books_Adults > Graphic novel, Changbi Books_Children > Picture book
Please Take Care of Café Bomoon, vols. 1-2

Comic books that convey quiet and warm consolation on days when you’re somehow at a loss! Please Take Care of Café Bomoon (2 vols.), comic books reflecting “SCH” (small but certain happiness), an issue that has gained considerable attention in South Korea, especially among younger generations, have been published. Centering on Seon-hwa, who has been suddenly entrusted with a coffee shop, the daily lives of charming characters are lovingly depicted in warm pastel tones. Would you look after Café Bomoon, A place where customers become owners and owners become customers? Seon-hwa is disappointed because Café Bomoon, her hangout, has been closed for several days. One day, she sees the owner of the establishment in her dream. In the dream, she is handed the key to the coffeehouse. Subsequently, the protagonist comes to be in charge of the place in reality. Regulars visit the café, and they and Seon-hwa become friends in the process of eating, drinking, talking, and laughing together. When new coffee shops open in the neighborhood and Café Bomoon is faced with financial difficulties, the heroine’s friends take turns running the place on disparate days of the week under various themes as well: “Gi-rin’s Counseling Center,” where tarot readings are offered; “Yun-ju’s Rice Balls,” where nutritious ingredients are painstakingly packed into rice balls; and “Café Bomoon on Saturday,” where old-fashioned salad bread is sold. Through everyone’s invaluable efforts, the coffeehouse gradually thrives. Then Seon-hwa has a chance to leave for France at the suggestion of her maternal aunt and decides to entrust Café Bomoon to Gi-rin. It is a moment when yet another customer becomes the owner. As the story unfolds, the café becomes a place not of an individual but of everyone. At times becoming the owners and running Café Bomoon, customers protect their precious space and stories.

Changbi Books, Changbi Books_Adults, Changbi Books_Adults > Graphic novel
THE AWL Vols. 1-6 (completed)

Having established itself as a must for salaried workers, a veritable national textbook on labor, and a Bible for all workers, The Awl is now complete in a total of six volumes. A recipient of the Korean Cartoon of Today Prize, this work caught public attention as a television drama of the same title in 2017 as well. A tour de force by cartoonist Choe Gyu-seok, who is a giant in South Korean comics, the work has enhanced public perceptions of labor problems according to many evaluators. By sharply depicting labor problems, which constitute the most crucial issue in South Korean society, and attaining both dramatic entertainment value and artistry through outstanding construction and storytelling in addition to conveying a social message, it has established itself as a monumental work in South Korean webcomics. A story of ordinary folks struggling to be treated as humans Set against Pureumi, a fictional French superstore chain in South Korea, in the latter half of the 2000s, this work unfolds with a focus on two protagonists: Yi Su-in, who has been instructed by the corporation to dismiss workers unjustly; and Gu Go-sin, a labor activist. A man of principles, Su-in is someone who cannot restrain outspoken criticism and is constantly at odds with the world. Though he has quit a career in the armed forces in order to live quietly and chosen an ordinary job, he once again clashes against the world because the company has ordered him to drive out employees by force. Aiding Su-in is Go-sin, a cool-headed and deft labor activist who runs a labor counseling center near the Pureumi chain. Unlike Su-in, who has difficulty getting along with people and sternly sticks to rules, he approaches others without hesitation and even resorts to extreme measures at times in order to accomplish goals. The process through which these two figures remind ordinary, diligent workers of their rights and change together will fire up readers. The message of The Awl is clear: working people naturally have rights, and such rights can be retrieved and a just society can be created only when ordinary people join forces together. Indeed, when the work was serialized online, the space for readers’ comments was filled with accounts of the reception of delayed wages and labor-related civil servants’ resolution to maintain integrity in their work, thus turning into a cyber labor counseling center for readers of various ages and classes. In other words, the comic also served as an occasion for readers to reexamine injustices suffered by everyone in life and to regain their lost rights. With increasingly vocal opinions in South Korean society today that labor education must be included in school curricula, some have even argued that The Awl must be designated as a textbook. Proof that popular works can also be created based on social topics, The Awl has left an indelible mark in South Korean comics. Conveying a social message, consummate in its artistry, entertaining, and moving at the same time, The Awl will remain a monumental work in the nation’s comics. Praise for The Awl Since others have amply praised the excellence of the theme already, to recommend the work as someone in the same field, I never even imagined that so much entertainment could be had from such a topic. In a word, it is seriously entertaining. The completion of a monumental work in South Korean comics. Choe Gyu-seok has painstakingly finished a tale harbored for a long time like an emotional debt, without a single panel drawn carelessly. The Awl is a tale neither of a knight-errant saving pitiable commoners nor of the populace attaining enlightenment on their own and achieving liberation as workers. It merely shows ordinary people who fight to be treated as humans in the shabby and wretched work lives that we lead each day. As such, the work is an all the more invaluable must-read.

Changbi Books > Adults, Changbi Books, Changbi Books_Adults > Graphic novel
The Taste of the First Time

A collection of stories in which diverse beginners including job seekers, newly employed, repeaters at various examinations, new independent businesspeople, and rookies at love are comforted, convey their feelings, overcome failures, and open their hearts through food, this volume warmly consoles youths who barely find their places in a confining society. As such, it is a bittersweet comic book of young novices in public life who meet and move forward through food. Stories of people who take their first steps in public life: Job seekers, newly employed, and rookies at love While meals eaten every day are all too easy to become simply means of staving off hunger, certain foods stay in the memory forever. Skewered fish balls eaten in the street with a lover on a cold winter day, ice cream eaten at an amusement park on South Korean Children’s Day—the feelings of those moments are remembered wholly by the tongue. The taste of the first time experienced by characters in their 20s-30s in this comic book is sweet at times, bitter at times. Memory of plum syrup drinks made by Mom, who now lives apart due to divorce; dried persimmons delivered from hometown while assiduously preparing for employment; vending machine coffee drunk while working at a driving school; fiery chicken feet eaten to shake off the memory of a degrading matchmaking session; café mocha drunk while working at a coffeehouse after giving up on becoming an actor; cooked rice sold in a paper cup eaten alone in the street of Noryangjin, a neighborhood in Seoul famous for cram schools for various test preparers, in order to save time for studying… The protagonists of the episodes each show the concerns of South Korean youths today as if unfolding a screen. Family, employment, dating, friendship, and career… Although the personages come from a wide spectrum, their tales will be relatable to anyone who has striven to enter public life. Su-yeon, a job seeker, finds herself shabby among friends who have already succeeded in finding their places in society; after failing even the driving test four times, Su-ji criticizes herself, “What’s easy for other people is so hard for me”; and Min-hui chooses to find employment after struggling to become an actor and facing the barrier of reality… Shining like gems, episodes with lifelike characters and circumstances will warm readers’ hearts.

Changbi Books, Changbi Books_Adults, Changbi Books_Adults > Graphic novel
How to Raise a Lone Person

A working woman in her late 20s who lives in a cramped studio apartment in Seoul, Yi Si-da, the protagonist, one day finds herself saddled with Squeaky Yun-fat, a hamster that used to belong to her friend. Subsequently, she is initiated into raising small animals and becomes friends with O Hae-su, a neighbor, thus extending her perspective to her life and surroundings through the experience of growing a small animal. This work has struck a deep chord with readers by accurately capturing, with an outstanding sensibility, the lives of single people living alone in South Korea today, where “solo eating” and “solo drinking” are no longer considered eccentric in an otherwise collectivistic society. Acclaimed by readers and critics alike for its adroit presentation, flowing sentences, restrained formal beauty, and contemporary sensibility, How to Raise a Lone Person has established itself as the most noteworthy and present work in South Korean webcomics now. Each of the women in this volume has had to undergo a plethora of trouble simply for being a female in South Korea: facing Grandmother’s tears that she was not a boy immediately after birth; covering up her nipples as secondary sex characteristics emerged; having menstrual blood leak out in a 24-hour café; putting on makeup each morning as if assembling a plastic model; being cursed by strangers for walking in the street with a foreign man; and being threatened with sexual harassment on the way home at night. How to Raise a Lone Person candidly depicts the unadorned lives of women and, even with this alone, creates a narrative that is unprecedented in the country. Episodes about growing small animals in How to Raise a Lone Person extend to individuals who live in teeming cities. Indeed, just how different are hamsters in 120 l boxes, living fish sold in takeout coffee cups, and humans in dormitory rooms measuring 3.3 m2? One way to reduce territorial feuds among cichlids in an aquarium is to make these fish give up fighting by creating an overcrowded state to begin with (episode 36, “Half Water, Half Fish”). Quoted in abundance, knowledge of rearing small animals metaphorically expands readers’ viewpoints to individual lives. This is presumably why the work is titled “how to raise a lone person” instead of “how to live alone.”

Changbi Books_Adults, Changbi Books_Adults > Graphic novel
Whitey

A message of hope from the wordless Whitey Whitey, a dog, is discarded by its owners because they are “sick of it.” Although it finds its way back to their home after great hardship, they have already moved away. After suffering from hunger and wandering about the streets, the canine encounters an elderly woman who gathers junk at the entrance to a shantytown, and her granddaughter Mi-rae, who is cheerful and kind-hearted despite the poverty. To repay the girl and her grandmother for unhesitatingly sharing their lunch box with a famished beast, Whitey collects waste from sundry places, and, in the end, the three form a new family and live together. One day, however, with Mi-rae away at school, Grandma is involved in an unexpected traffic accident while gathering junk with the help of Whitey. For the girl and her grandmother, who now are without a livelihood, the animal visits an employment agency and, thanks to the consideration of its kind director, comes to work as a day laborer at diverse places including construction sites. Although initially shunned and resented by people for taking “humans’ work,” Whitey prompts them to look back at themselves, awakens them, and gives them hope with its quiet diligence. Meanwhile, Mi-rae is bullied at school for being poor. Su-cheol, her seating partner in the classroom, is at the head of such taunts. Nevertheless, the girl is always kind and good to the boy. Though mean at first, Su-cheol has a change of heart and repents his wrongdoing after after realizing that she is the only one to help him in times of trouble, going on to protect the girl from harassment by other children. When Whitey and Mi-rae are barely settled in their respective positions, however, the dog is suddenly infected with heartworms and falls gravely ill. Unable to obtain medical expenses, the girl and her grandmother do their utmost to save the animal…

Changbi Books, Changbi Books > Adults > Non-fiction > Graphic novel

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