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An Analysis of Korean “Soonjung Manwha” with Focus on Sword of Fire by Kim Hye Rin

Kim, Hye-Joo 1

1청주대학교

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ABSTRACT

Market for manwha is conspicuously polarized into two separate ones for either sex unlike any other media market. In East Asian countries, including Japan, dichotomy has existed between manwha for men and that for women or between manwha for boys and that for girls. In Korea, however, the term "soonjung manwha", i.e., manwha about pure love, has been used as a conception that comprehends manwha for women in general. And yet controversy over soonjung manwha never seems to be concluded due to its diversification in the 1990's. Soonjung manwha may rightly be called so, when we consider it mainly deals with human relations, flows of emotions, change of thoughts, and complex human psychology, whatever its story may be. And we can find its uniqueness in the fact that it not only defies the dualism of glamour girl/ muscular man implied in manwha for men, but represents female viewpoint through aesthetic forms. Conventional soonjung manwha mostly relies on romance plot that is facing criticism for its re-production of patriarchal values. But the writers of soonjung manwha who emerged in mid 1980's reject the fixed ideas of patriarchal values and sex roles. Herein is placed Kim Hye Rin's Sword of Fire. She reveals the collective experience of women and womanly sensitiveness and treats the issue of recovery of female identity by challenging the ideology of chastity, so the work can be read as a feministic manwha. Thus Sword of Fire may be characterized by its presenting the idea of initiative and subjective(independent) woman who overcomes the social circumstances and sex consciousness in 1980's and 1990's, together with its attempts to establish Korean aesthetic viewpoint free from the Western aestheticism. Sword of Fire, with insights into history and life and thorough historical investigations, is also evaluated as a work that demonstrates the high caliber of Kim Hye Rin as a story teller. On the other hand, writer's main view in Sword of Fire can be summed up as a warmhearted attitude toward men. This is also implicit in her view of human nature that denies the dualistic scheme of good and evil. On the other hand, I think that there still remains the residue of soonjung manwha of the 1980's that had a preference for aesthetic characters and valued romantic love. In respect of the plastic art, however, Kim Hye Rin can be considered very unique and original in that she attempts to reflect Korean aesthetic viewpoint in the costumes, hair styles and the proportion of human body, e.g. comparably big faces, in defiance of the Western ideal proportion of the figure, and she also adopts brush painting style instead of screen tone.

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