Manwha or Manga

The comparison of The Legend of Chun Hyang and Goong Vol. 1 is very similar yet complex. In Goong, the female character is portrayed as “nimble”, quiet, confused and thrust into the most unfamiliar possible for a girl of her class in a modified modern day Korea. In The Legend of Chun Hyang, we find a polar opposite character; overzealous, heroic and headsprung. However, they share the same situation of being out of place in their society. Part of this is irony setup by the authors which makes each tale even more interesting and is the center of each drama. Even more though, the gender role of each is perhaps more striking. In Goong it is not as evident but it is the dream of becoming royalty, and in Legend of Chun Hyang; Chun defies the gender roles of being quiet and reserved, not to mention her mastery of martial arts. CLAMP clearly states her position and how out of place she is with the norm of society on page 25. Chun’s mother says “I’m sure you used your martial arts in the name of good, BUT YOU ARE A GIRL!” Furthermore, Chun is in a time when gender roles and inequality were even more widened than in the modern drama of Goong. This is what makes such a successful manhwa. There are so many manhwa (and manga) that deal with everyday life with twists and turns but I think that when gender is involved it not only attracts more readers but challenges the current gender roles of the status quo. It makes people question how gender stereotypes and positions are now and wonder what things could be like or if they should be challenged further.

One cool part that I found in the Legend of Chun Hyang as well was the use of Japanese characters in many frames. As we discussed in class, globalization has led to the spread of manga/manhwa outside of its native authorship. I think it is interesting that the translator kept the Japanese characters in the manhwa. I don’t know if this was intentional or if it was just too hard to remove them from each frame. Also on one page we can see Korean, English, and Japanese writing all in one frame; talk about cross-culturalism!