Angouleme is a small, quiet town located 440 kilometers southwest of Paris, France. But the usually sleepy town comes to life at the end of January every year, when the Angouleme International Comics Festival is held. Here’s Korean cartoonist Shin Myeong-hwan신명환 to tell us more about the festival.

The Angouleme International Comics Festival, which started back in 1974, marked its 41st anniversary this year. Angouleme is a small city with a population of about 40 thousand, but during the festival more than 200 thousand people descend on the town to celebrate comics from all over the globe. It’s the world’s largest comics festival and along with the Cannes International Film Festival, one of France’s five greatest festivals.



This year’s comics festivity was especially meaningful for Korea, because a special exhibition was held just for Korean comic strips which dealt with the subject of Korean women taken as sexual slaves for Japanese troops during World War II. Here’s Chairman Lee Hee-jae of the Korea Manhwa Contents Agency to tell us more about the exhibition.

In marking the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I in 1914, this year’s theme had to do with war’s destructive consequences on mankind and the lessons we can learn. Korea had experienced countless atrocities during World War II, under the imperial Japanese government. One of the most glaring and painful brutalities was the sexual slavery forced on young Korean women. The victims of this war crime still suffer from the horrors of the inhumane acts. We thought it would be meaningful to let the world know about this cruelty through the special exhibition.

Named “Flowers that Never Wilt,” the special exhibition of Korean comic strips and cartoons about the wartime sex slaves told their heartbreaking stories and exposed the ruthless savagery of the Japanese military to the world. Koreans are still angered by the fact that young, innocent Korean women were taken from their homes and forced to satisfy the sexual urges of Japanese troops. However, this heinous incident is little known outside of Korea. The stories of so-called “comfort women” first surfaced in 1991, when now-deceased Kim Hak-soon김학순 testified about her harrowing experience as a sex slave under the Japanese colonial rule. Sadly, she died in 1997, without ever receiving a word of regret or apology from the Japanese government. There are 51 surviving comfort women in Korea now. They have raised their voices to condemn the Japanese government for having engaged in systematic violations of human rights and to demand acknowledgement and a sincere apology from Japan, but so far their efforts have been met with a wall of silence and denial from Tokyo.

Concerns mounted leading up to the exhibition. There were many obstacles on the way to hosting the show. Here’s comics artist Shin Myeong-hwan to tell us more.

I was being very careful, because I was really worried. I had to be cautious, since the exhibition dealt with a sensitive historical issue. Although the Angouleme festival’s organizing committee had readily agreed to the exhibition, the committee wanted the process and featured items to be fair and objective. So we were extremely careful in selecting the entries and even how we phrased the captions.

Among the 19 Korean comics artists who took part in the exhibition, some had already done work on the wartime sex slavery issue and some had to study that part of history from the very beginning. Each artist had a challenge to overcome, but everyone was committed to exposing the truth and healing the wounds. Here’s comics artist Shin Myeong-hwan again.

In order to draw a comic strip about the former wartime sex slaves, we needed to find out more about them and our history. All I knew was the information I got from newspaper articles. I realized how little I knew about them, and not only myself, but all of us, cartoonists and Koreans in general, so imagine how ignorant the rest of the world would be. We had to be careful not to compound their pain. It wasn’t easy to incorporate our tender feelings toward them in our work. Also, we cartoonists had a lot to talk about, since we were taking part in an overseas festival. It wasn’t easy but we were able to pull it off, because the work meant something for us.

At the special exhibition the stories of Korean comfort women took the forms of comic strips, cartoons, installation artwork, animated films and documentaries. Seventeen comic works, four videos and three installations displayed at the 41st Angouleme International Comics Festival were so revealing and heart-wrenching that visitors were outraged at the extent of cruelty inflicted on innocent people during the war.

Those who watched director Kim Jun-ki’s 11-minute animation “Story of a Girl” could hear the chilling story of the late Jeong Seo-wun in her own voice. In a recorded interview Jeong told of how she was taken to Java Island in Indonesia and endured years of sexual depravity. Foreign audiences were enraged at the horror and wept for her. Roughly 17 thousand visitors came to the Korean exhibit during the four-day festival. Nobody thought that so many people would come. Comics artist Kim Gwang-seong김광성, who was at the festival, describes the atmosphere.



The reactions were hotter than I expected. People left so many encouraging messages, telling us how outraged they were. The reason they were so shocked and infuriated is that teenage girls were dragged from their homes and forced into sexual servitude for years. This is an unprecedented rape case. I was surprised to see older French women get teary as they saw our comics. I think they were able to relate to the Korean victims. Their empathy was what impressed me the most.

The success of the Korean exhibition at Angouleme made Korean comics artists realize how important their roles were as tellers of history.

We didn’t realize the power of comics until we saw the reactions. That’s when we knew that comics could play a part in meaningful endeavors. There were many difficulties while preparing for this exhibition, but many of my colleagues were determined to take part in the exhibition. In the process we came to see how much more we have to work on informing the world about comfort women.

Following the successful show in Angouleme, an encore exhibition is being held at Korea Manhwa Museum in Bucheon. It opened on February 18.

The exhibition in Bucheon features all the comics that had been shown in Angouleme, plus some candid shots taken at the French festival. There is also a small theater where visitors can see the animated films presented at the Angouleme International Comics Festival. Right next to the entrance of the exhibition hall there is artist Shin Myeong-hwan’s installation piece entitled “Flowers that Never Wilt.” An hourglass plays a meaningful role in this piece. It cannot be turned upside down, and serves as a reminder the history of sexual slavery cannot be repeated. Here’s Shin Myeong-hwan himself to tell us more about his work.

I used an hourglass to indicate how war and violence blocks the passage of time. The sand in my hourglass cannot come down from the top half because the waist of the hourglass is stopped up. The sand is turned into a girl’s face, which is trampled by war, weapons and soldiers’ boots. Then the girl ages into an old woman living in poverty, and the sand is released from the top only when she dies. Time would be turned back if the hourglass is turned upside down again, so as to not repeat the terrible history again, the sand in my hourglass turns into flowers.

Beyond Shin Myeong-hwan’s installation art, visitors get to see Cha Sung-jin’s drawing entitled “When That Day Comes.” The painting of an old woman with a mourning ribbon symbolizes all the comfort women who have died without having their pleas for justice heard. Other stirring works include Tak Young-ho’s탁영호 “Flower Ring,” a series of drawings of young girls, and Koh Kyung-il’s고경일 “Untitled,” which depicts Japanese fighter jets dropping Korean women on to the battlefield. These disquieting works make us regret our past ignorance about the former comfort women’s distress.

(Woman 1) I can’t see it anymore. It’s so heartbreaking. It’s terrible that the Japanese don’t know about this issue too well. I can’t understand how they could be unaware of this.
(Woman 2) I’m tearing up and my heart is breaking. I just knew the historical facts before, but these works are so much more detailed and look so real. That’s why it’s easier to understand and so poignant.

Painter Park Jae-dong’s박재동 drawing of a young girl in tears is particularly touching. Comics artist Shin Myeong-hwan tells us more about Park’s work.

Park Jae-dong’s work is two-point-two-five meters long and named “Unending Road.” At first, he wanted to make the painting ten meters long, but the space at Angouleme was too small for that. Visitors were supposed to view the painting from the first frame in the left, where a crying girl has her face buried in her hands. People move slowly to the right to see why the girl is crying, following the road running at the bottom of the painting. At the end of the road is the girl’s hometown. Park tried to express the longing of all the girls who could not go home to their families.

Park Jae-dong’s painting signified the deep resentment of comfort women, but comics artist Lee Hyun-se이현세 tried to show their anger. Here’s Shin Myeong-hwan again.

Lee Hyun-se’s rather audacious drawing has a young girl stomping on a Japanese samurai. This scene expresses Korean women’s wrath. There is even dialogue that goes with the picture. It talks about how the girl was only 13 years old when she was taken from a potato field and how terrified she was.

Kim Gwang-seong’s comic book “Butterfly’s Song” was based on the testimonies of Korean women. Here’s the author himself to explain more about his comics.

The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery uses yellow butterflies to symbolize comfort women. I’ve used yellow butterflies in my drawings as well. There was one old woman in her 70s who has hidden her past as a comfort woman. But she makes friends at the Wednesday protest and decides to tell her secret to her family. Finally freed from the pressing burden of her lifelong secret, she flies toward new hope like a butterfly. My biggest concern was how to tone down the horrendous brutality yet communicate the seriousness of the situation.

The average age of surviving comfort women is 88. They don’t have much time to get Japan to admit to wartime atrocities and make sincere apologies to women who were made to serve as sexual toys to the Japanese military. Korean women victimized by the Japanese military have been staging Wednesday protests in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul for more than two decades, while the Japanese government has been steadily ignoring the historical facts displayed before the world. But now Korean comics introduced at the Angouleme International Comics Festival have shown the world the institutionalized brutality and violations of human rights committed by Japan, and that shock is reverberating around the globe. Here’s Chairman Lee Hee-jae of the Korea Manhwa Contents Agency once more.

Comics are often perceived as a funny, entertaining, and somewhat trivial genre. But the recent exhibition demonstrated that comics can bring people’s attention to important social and historical issues. There are still many surviving sex slaves and their lives are a testament to Japan’s wartime brutalities. This should not be discussed only among Koreans, but must be shown to the rest of the world. At the Angouleme International Comics Festival the world got to see the truth in an unadulterated fashion. That is why the Korean exhibition was so meaningful and helpful to the cause of Korean comfort women.