Attempts to not leave victims only in the place of a victim are made in many cultural contents before and after the so-called 'feminism reboot'. In comics, there was <MotherDaughter> (by the artist, Effect of Seaweed) which expressed the victim of a sexual assault in various dimensions. In webtoons, there was <Danzi> which dealt with domestic violence and similar effort was carried over by new webtoons such as <27-10> which covered domestic sexual assault and <The Kid who Walks Looking at the Ground> which addressed child abuse. The comics published by Changbi   <This year's Mi-Sook> could be considered as one of such works.

 

 

The protagonist of <This year's Mi-Sook> is of course 'Mi-Sook', who has a year older sister. The story begins with the scene where Mi-Sook comes out from the hospital after receiving depression diagnostic tests with her older sister 'Jeong-Sook'. After taking the depression test, Jeong-Sook heads back home where she lives with her mother, Mi-Sook returns to her own house. Both sisters are in their twenties, and Mi-Sook earns money, makes her own living space and lives the life of an ordinary adult while having an all right love relationship. However,    such an ordinary and safe life that Mi-Sook has built up wasn't just there from the beginning.

 

During her youth, Mi-Sook was at the bottom of the chain of violence at home. Her father hit her mother from time to time, and her sister beat Mi-Sook with the resentment of not getting recognized by her father. Being bullied at school and also having no place to be at home, Mi-Sook meets a friend called Jay by chance and gains a sense of deep friendliness and comfort from him. The way in which the times spent together by Jay and Mi-Sook are depicted in this comics is very impressive. Jay and Mi-Sook cook instant noodles at home, watch videos, go on a travel and they stare at each other lying on the bed while traveling. In the same period, though Mi-Sook was beaten and harassed by her older sister at home, such scenes do not come out while she is spending time with Jay. Only the traces of Mi-Sook getting physically abused from Jeong-Sook are illustrated figuratively, or through the dialogues.

 

Mi-Sook is similar to the character 'Jindo' in this comics.- Jindo is a jindo dog brought home by her father and got looked after with utmost care. However, as it is revealed later that Jindo is not a purebred Jindo dog, it soon gets completely excluded from the father's attention. Jindo becomes tied to a fixed chain all the time and keeps wandering around the same place, eating it's own poop. After Mi-sook and Jay came back home from the trip, the first thing they noticed when they entered the door was dog shits lying everywhere on the floor. Clearly, nobody has cleaned Jindo's poops until then.

 

Shortly after the trip, Mi-Sook gets suddenly betrayed by Jay. After Mi-Sook busts up with Jay, she leaves school immediately to prepare for the GED, and as soon as she passes the GED, she acquires the job as a bookkeeper in a company with it's office based in a small container. As Mi-Sook becomes independent after her employment, she foremostly unhooks Jindo's collar and brings Jindo to her room. Then, she changes the name of 'Jindo' which was given by her father to 'Jeolmi' to call it by a new name.

 

During her junior high school period, Mi-Sook was called as 'Hey, Mi-Sook-Ah', not as even either 'Hey', or 'Mi-Sook-Ah' (* 'misookah' means premature in Korean). Such nickname kept following her like a 'name tag'. Mi-Sook changing Jindo's name to Jeolmi shows her will to remove her past nickname of 'Hey, Mi-Sook-Ah' and take on her own way of life rather than the way of violence. Mi-Sook's new life after breaking off the chain of violence, that will no longer overlook the people beating her is completely different from before.

 

Mi-Sook calmly recalls her narrative and states remotely at the end of the comics. "Jeolmi no longer eats poops. The past seems like a distant future." In Mi-Sook's present life, there are no traces of the past left, stained with violence anymore. This line doesn't mean that her new life came to be because of such past, but indicates that Mi-Sook is no longer bound in the past. Rather, she considers her past as a distant future that will never come again.

 

Mi-Sook is now reborn as 'This Year's Mi-Sook' living in the present time. The past hasn't left even a small trace for her. Jeolmi isn't Jindo anymore, nor Mi-Sook is 'Hey, Mi-Sook-Ah' any longer.

 

Jo Gyeon-suk