Comics/manga in North Korea
Interesting article on comic books/manga in communist North Korea.
Sound alot like the Battle, Warlord and Victor comics from the 80s really.
I have been told that alot of the popular US cartoons are actually outsourced to North Korea (often via the south), their anime makers being regarded as some of the best in the world.
An older article on the same subject here...
Sound alot like the Battle, Warlord and Victor comics from the 80s really.
I have been told that alot of the popular US cartoons are actually outsourced to North Korea (often via the south), their anime makers being regarded as some of the best in the world.
The comic books that brainwash North Koreans
Feb 26, 2010 15:06 EST
Global Post
By Geoffrey Cain
SEOUL, South Korea — Heinz Insu Fenkl, a literature professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz, has cracked one secret to understanding the bizarre regime of North Korea: by reading its comic books.
The academic, who refers to himself as an American-Korean, spends hours in his office tucked away in upstate New York, churning out English translations of the rare books (called “gruim-chaek” in North Korea) after he gathers them at shops in China and from colleagues who travel to Pyongyang.
The plots are often wacky, usually pinning blame on loud-mouthed Americans and opportunist Japanese for cursing their promised land with vice. Most books are leaked to China through the border town of Dandong — a hub of smuggling in North Korean goods. Others end up in a single shop in Tokyo that specializes in hermit-state memorabilia. Still, others mysteriously make their way to university libraries in the U.S.
Of the “gruim-chaek” I’ve located, those published this decade tend to be spy thrillers probably aimed at young boys and teenagers. The cartoonists establish the storylines strictly as moralistic good-versus-evil tales. And almost all the books are printed in black-and-white on poor quality paper.
CONTINUES HERE
An older article on the same subject here...
COMICS ARE NO JOKE
Picturing North Korean propaganda
By GLYN FORD and SOYOUNG KWON
Special to The Japan Times
Sunday, Aug. 27, 2006
Japan's comic craze was first documented for the West with the publication of Frederick Schodt's "Manga Manga, The World of Japanese Comics" (1983). Since then, the production and consumption of manga and anime -- its moving picture equivalent -- have spread to China and the Republic of Korea. More recently, on the production side, North Korea has emerged as a destination for "outsourcing" the heavy manual labor element of both manga and anime, as illustrated by French-Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle's introspective graphic novel "Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea" (2005). Almost nothing, however, has been written on the indigenous manga industry in North Korea.
CONTINUES HERE
0
Comments
(SOURCE)