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[HanCinema's Korea Diaries] "Bucheon" July 26th-27th

I first saw festival director Park Jae-dong on the Busan red carpet. At the time I was baffled as to why such an important person was wearing a Batman costume. That question was cleared up at the opening ceremony for the Bucheon International Comics Festival (부천국제만화축제). The Batman costume is actually a kind of prop intended to imply that Park Jae-dong has supernatural powers which, among other things, allow him to give commands to a gigantic animatronic robot. Ceremony mingled with the weird as the program jumped between robot skits and award ceremonies.

This woman is...actually, I'm not sure who she is or why she was (one of) the moderators for the opening ceremony. I snapped the picture because she's wearing a very fine outfit and just figured I'd look the information up later. Ha. Easier said than done. I really need to take better care of the programs I'm always getting at these events, even if they only have the relevant information half the time maybe.

By contrast, this photo is of an award winner, and much easier to parse- Milo (마일로), the author of Women's Sauna Report (여탕보고서) is winning the grand prize of ten million won ($10,000) for, as far as I can tell, being an all-around awesome cartoonist that everyone loves. While the webtoon format has been very helpful to South Korean cartoonists in allowing them to make a living, it's still not a very lucrative profession so they need all the help they can get.

No, the main perk of being a cartoonist is that you live in a social scene with oddities like this- giant robots wandering around doing whatever. Unlike the mechanical monstrosity that was the highlight of the opponing ceremony, this is just someone wearing an oversized robot suit, filling nearby children with wonder and terror, as robots are wont to do.

In more educational matters, this child is looking over a projection of the famous Czech cartoon Lucky Four. What, you've never heard of Lucky Four? Perhaps you know them better by their Czech name, Čtyřlístek? Still nothing? Well...that's the story of international comics really. A lot of the more famous worldwide standards are completely unknown outside their home country or greater region. That is, except when it comes to gatherings like the Bucheon International Comics Festival or the galleries of groups affiliated with such organizations.

You may not have known, for example, that using the South Korean production model as a baseline webtoons have become very popular in China as well. For those of you who don't even know what the South Korean production model is, basically, portal sites like Naver and Daum pay artists to make webtoons on a regular schedule. That's really about it- webtoons are a very smart-phone friendly format, so they're very easy to read anywhere, anytime.

If you're wondering why American companies have not seized upon this very obvious, intuitive idea, well, this is one reason for that- the deification of artists from several decades ago. Don't get me wrong, Peanuts is great, and historically important. That's why it, too, had its own exhibition at one of the display centers of the Korean Manhwa Museum. But it's also not terribly relevant in a modern market where newspaper comics practically don't even exist anymore.

Anyway, back to Korean stuff. I finally figured out what these things are called- Guardian Poles (장숭). Their function is pretty much exactly the same as the Guardian Statues (돌하르방) mentioned way back in my Jeju travelogues. They protect places from evil spirits. I guess on the mainland rustic charm doesn't count for as much except in odd places like the Bucheon International Comics Festival.

Still, I'll take whatever weird I can wherever I can get it. I may have only been around for the first day, but nonetheless, the Bucheon International Comics Festival was quite the experience.

Article by William Schwartz

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