Reminiscing about a Pioneer on Cartoon Day

Some 300 Korean cartoonists celebrated Cartoon Day on November 3rd. Now in its 12th year, the day was created with the purpose of promoting Korean cartoons, and bringing local cartoonists together. Marking the occasion, the comic artists promised to create a better future for Korean cartoons in the 100 years to come. Who drew cartoons for the first time in this country?

Birth of Korean Cartoon

The first Korean comic strip was published on the first issue of the Daehan Minbo newspaper on June 2nd, 1909.

Entitled “Illustration,” the one-cut cartoon strip shows a gentleman wearing a Western-style suit and pouring out a four-line poem from his mouth. The lines of the quatrain start with dae, han, min and bo each, which are the syllables of the name of the newspaper. The comic strip points to the proper roles of a newspaper, which is supposed to read the overall situation correctly, invigorate the national spirit, listen to the voice of public opinion and keep people informed of news events. The person who drew this cartoon piece is Lee Do-young, whose penname is Gwanjae(관재).

In fact, Lee had never been much interested in cartoons. He was born to a noble family in 1884. His ancestors served in high-ranking government posts for generations. When he was 18 years old, he learned traditional painting as a student from famous Korean painters of the time, such as Ahn Joong-sik(안중식) and Cho Seok-jin(조석진).
Lee inherited Ahn’s style and displayed gentle and freewheeling brush strokes when drawing figures, birds and still-life. It was prominent calligrapher Oh Se-chang(오세창) who helped turn this traditional painter into a cartoonist.

Satirizing the Age of Resistance

As one of the 33 representatives who signed the Korean Declaration of Independence on March 1st, 1919, Oh had a profound knowledge of paintings and calligraphic works. In 1902, he was implicated in a political conspiracy and defected to Japan. There, he happened to meet Sohn Byung-hee(손병희), the leader of the indigenous religion known as Cheondo-gyo(천도교), and began to show interest in Korea’s independence movement.

After staying in Japan for four years, Oh returned home in 1906. He became the head of the Mansebo(만세보), a daily newspaper created by Sohn, and engaged in a campaign to redeem the national debt. When the Dahan Minbo newspaper was launched in 1909, Oh assumed the post of president and carried out a movement aimed at cultivating national strength. At the time, Oh respected two painters—Ahn and Cho—and he asked their pupil Lee Do-young to draw ingenious comic strips for the newspaper.

From then on, Lee instilled anti-Japanese spirit, awakened the public to the national crisis Korea faced and satirized imperial Japan and pro-Japanese collaborators through his woodprint cartoons until the newspaper was forced to cease publication on August 31st, 1910.

Back to Traditional Painting

After Korea lost its sovereignty following the signing of the Japan-Korea annexation treaty in 1910, Lee returned to the world of ink-and-wash painting. In 1911, he taught painting at the Calligraphic Painting School led by his teachers, Ahn and Cho. When his peer Ko Hee-dong, who studied Western painting at Tokyo Art School, took the initiative in establishing the Calligraphic Painters’ Association in 1918, Lee participated in the project as one of the promoters and later led the group.

Lee was a prolific artist, as he took part in the first exhibition of the association members’ work in 1921 and ran his works such as ‘The Source of Eastern Painting’ and ‘Study of Eastern Painting’ as serials on the Calligraphic Painters' Association News. Lee displayed his ability in the Korean art community until he died in 1933 at the age of 50.

Opening the Way for Korean Cartoons to Develop in Ensuing 100 Years

The life of the first Korean comic artist ended, but Korean cartoons began to develop in earnest. Newspapers such as the Chosun Ilbo and the Dong-A Ilbo were launched in 1920, and they published political cartoons serially and introduced satirical cartoons for readers. The 1924 four-frame comic strip entitled ‘Pumpkin Head Catches at Shadows’ by Eastern-style painter Roh Su-hyun(노수현) enjoyed great popularity, becoming the first cartoon to be adapted into a movie.

After Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, feature-length cartoons began to appear, moving beyond the scope of comic strips on newspapers or magazines. After the 1960s, a number of comic artists including Shin Dong-woo(신동우), Ko Woo-young(고우영) and Kim Won-bin(김원빈) pursued Korean-style cartoons and demonstrated a new possibility of cartoons. In the 1980s and ‘90s, numerous rising artists such as Lee Hyun-se(이현세), Lee Do-ho(이두호), Hur Young-man(허영만), Kim Su-jeong(김수정), Hwang Mi-na(황미나) and Shin Il-suk(신일숙) appeared in the local cartoon scene to explore various genres.

In the 2000s, eye-catching online cartoonists including Kang Pool(강풀) led the development of Korean cartoons. It would be fair to say that the long history actually started from Lee Do-young, the pioneer of Korean cartoons.