The Four Color Media Monitor

The Korea Times interviewed Anny Min, an 82-year old manhwa artist whose work was considered notable for its time, and who had to put up with an unfortunate case of censorship by the local government during the 1960s:

Driven by a pure love for cartoons, she embarked on her artistic journey, a path she readily admits was far from easy.

"In those days, cartoons were widely regarded as a social ill, an impediment to academic pursuits. I was often scolded for indulging in cartoons instead of studying. Even in high school, when I was drawing portraits of Hollywood actors, even my art teacher would chide me, saying, 'Will drawing faces all day put food on the table?' Cartoonists were considered a lesser form of artist compared to children's book illustrators," she said.

Despite these prevailing attitudes, Min began creating cartoons with paper and ink, using a wooden apple crate as her workspace. Following her father's wishes — who named her "Shin-sik" (new style) to embrace the new — she embodied this spirit by forging her own path as a comic artist. Unlike many aspiring artists who sought apprenticeships under established masters, she taught herself and boldly took her three-volume series, "The Girl Who Sells Dreams," directly to the Korea Children's Comics Self-Regulation Council, Korea's censorship office at the time. [...]

She has witnessed the ebb and flow of the Korean comic book industry firsthand. A founding member of the Joint Publishing Company, established by a collective of approximately 100 comic artists, she was one of only three women, alongside Song Soon-hee and Um Hee-ja, and remains the sole active member today. Their romance cartoons enjoyed immense popularity among young female readers in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

"Everyone, even little children, has their own worries. When someone is hurting, a friend can empathize with their sadness and when there's joy and excitement, they can share in that excitement. That's what I think love is. My romance cartoons have always instilled that warm sense of love, which is what truly makes them romance cartoons," she said.

However, the Korea Children's Comics Self-Regulation Council, a pre-publication censorship authorities formed in the 1960s under the Park Chung-hee military regime, wielded its power under the guise of "deliberation" and arbitrarily and crudely mutilated cartoons based on subjective criteria.

"Reasons employed were as absurd as 'Skirts above the knee are unacceptable. They are decadent,' 'Stylish bangs are forbidden. They promote decadence and extravagance,' 'No rings or earrings. They encourage a culture of luxury,' or even 'Two people of the opposite sex in one frame are prohibited. They foster an immoral atmosphere,'" she recounted.

Wow, that doesn't sound all that different from some forms of censorship that may have been seen in the past decade, such as sex-negative viewpoints that did more to hurt women than help. The opposition to drawing jewelry certainly reeks of socialist mentality, which, sadly, may have been the case even on the south side of Korea back at the time.

Witnessing their painstakingly crafted manuscripts mutilated, artists were no longer able to create freely. They confined themselves to plots and drawings that conformed to the committee's dictates. The safe havens were tales of virtuous girls overcoming hardship or adaptations of foreign works, according to Min.

Amid these restrictive times, her 1973 work "White Sailboat," a tale of destiny-bound love between two young women, was born. It depicts the love between Sook-ah, a girl who comes to work as a maid in a wealthy household, and falls into an irresistible love with Ran-yi, the lady of the house, after drinking a mysterious potion.

Faced with strict censorship that forbade depictions of heterosexual love, the cartoonist decided to sidestep the restrictions by portraying romance between women instead. To her surprise, it passed the censors without a hitch.

"They wouldn't allow a male character to even appear as a background character behind a woman. But two women embracing and utterly besotted with each other were perfectly fine," she said, laughing. "What did they know of queer relationships back then? I took advantage of their ignorance and gave them a little taste of their own medicine."

Now isn't that odd, and perhaps a foreshadowing of what was to come in recent times - heterosexual love restricted too? Some "moralists" have to understand that the examples they set can have unintended consequences sooner or later, and in the USA in the past decade, LGBT ideology was forced into mainstream, corporate-owned comics mercilessly, and made whatever could've turned up in Asian look tame by comparison.

Starting from the late 1970s, a flood of Japanese cartoons, depicting everything from abnormal psychology to intricate romantic entanglements, poured into Korea through clandestine channels. Meanwhile, the Korean cartoon industry, stifled by censorship, stagnated. The 1980s saw Korean romance cartoons heavily influenced by Japanese manga styles, with a generational shift led by artists like Shin Il-sook and Kim Jin.

Amid these shifts, Min played a pivotal role in nurturing the second generation of Korean comics artists while continuing her own prolific work, spanning educational and biblical cartoons.

If the signs are correct, some of this censorship hopefully wore off by the end of the 80s, though it wouldn't be surprising if there's still problems today. But, this could serve as a lesson that, if you know where to look, you can find some very sad examples of censorship in foreign countries that for all we know, might've influenced recent advocates in the USA as well. And that's but one reason why foreign countries who care need to start doing whatever possible to improve the situation for creativity.

Labels: censorship issues, Europe and Asia, history, manga and anime, politics