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Formation of Cartoon Clubs and Romance Comics - Focusing on Renaissance -

  • Journal of Humanities
  • 2025, (98), pp.121~152
  • Publisher : Institute for Humanities
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : July 7, 2025
  • Accepted : July 29, 2025
  • Published : August 31, 2025

Eunyoung Seo 1

1한양대학교(ERICA캠퍼스) 문화콘텐츠전략연구소

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Focusing on Renaissance, a romance comics magazine, this paper traces the background and development of the comics clubs that emerged alongside the growth of the Korean cartoon industry. In this process, it examines the role of the magazine Renaissance as a major publishing outlet. It also aims to examine what discourses female creators and readers formed through Renaissance as a forum for public discussion, and to trace the process of establishing themselves as cultural subjects based on discourses. Cartoon clubs were formed starting with the KWAC (Korea Woman Amateur Comics) in 1982. Cartoon clubs have the characteristics of the gender of women, the genre of romance (or pure love) comics, and the generation of twenty-somethings (often referred to as the emotional generation or Generation X). Korean cartoon clubs have the special characteristics of linking generation and gender. Meanwhile, the cartoon clubs pursued the most important goal of fostering cartoonists’ creativity for their professional debut and emphasized individuality and experimentality. This was a struggle of cultural subjects who distrusted and criticized the existing comics market and sought to reform its culture through their own creations. In addition, the goal of incorporating the cartoon culture they created into the mainstream and spreading it across the country was interpreted as a subversive and political movement. Therefore, the cartoon clubs and the publication of literary coterie magazines were the spaces of resistance for female creators and consumers to gain a foothold in the male-centered cartoon market. In addition, it was also a cultural practice to transform the low-class and male-dominated cartoon market into high-quality and artistic cartoon culture and comics art. Meanwhile, Renaissance brought together the emotional generation, women, and amateur coteries at colleges against the established cartoon industry and led them to a single forum that fostered an emotional community.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2024 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.