Today’s Our Manhwa Award selects 5 manhwas highly acclaimed in the year. In 2017, the Award selected Danzi (Lezhin Comics), Cashiero, Ah I left my wallet (Daum Webtoon), San Francisco Hwarangkwan (Line Webtoon), and Myeoneulragi (published on Facebook). Among them, the reason why Danzi and Myeoneuragi are selected are remarkable: ‘a masterwork expressed current condition of violence against women in detail within the grammar of comics’, ‘cool-headedly depicted the process of a newly married woman recognizing violence of the patriarchy wide-spread in everyday life without describing a person or something as the absolute evil’. These two reviews may seem different to each other, but they are same in their root. The root is related to feminism issue, a recent hot topic.

Danzi unfolds the story of domestic abuse and discrimination against the protagonist, Danzi, from her childhood. While introducing her anecdotes, the author inserts interview scenes expressing the author’s own view to soothe the reader’s emotional stress and reset the atmosphere of the work. Furthermore, the author inserts things proving the story is real, like diary entries or messenger archives, to subtly emphasize that the story is actually not fictitious. Tempo regulation which keeps calm despite the high emotional stress and its frame directing that weaving the interviews and the current situation make the readers’ immersion deeper, and they make the readers think about how they would feel if they were in Danzi’s shoes, more subjectively. The anger and stuffiness while reading Danzi come from such precise completeness.

The work is based on the author’s real experience, but she unfolds her story in a surprisingly calm manner. As it also shows with that it makes use of fake directing to make the readers expect the next episode or that distribution of frames between interviews and real stories, the most surprising point of this work is that it is not a case report listing many stories of abuse. It does not imitate NGO brochures containing horrible cases of abused children in order to get more donation. The main target that this work talks with, the abused children themselves, expresses the consolation they would want to hear with their lives. This consolation is not skewed. It recommends them to admit their pain and be aware of the aftermath of their scars, rather than ending their lives as a person full of victim mentality. And it sincerely prays for them to be free from their family, to reach a new life.

The reason why the readers cried together and got consolation from Danzi is, that it shares impacts of shocking stories by actively make use of reactions from the protagonist character. When it needs emotional directing, the work intensely depicts major character’s feelings with bold lines. The author doesn’t make only the readers brood alone over the feelings from the depiction. The author reacts to them together, and inserts the protagonist easing the readers and telling them ‘it is not a big deal.’ to mitigate the impact. Through this, the protagonist could become a good consultant for the scarred, a senior ahead in terms of living a life, and a friend sharing the scar. The author raised the protagonist to this place through shocking stories in the early stage, then shows how the now-friendly protagonist unfolds her feelings. No one ignores a friend sitting next to us. We become to follow as the author directs, shedding tears. The work unfolds the story, without giving the readers too much stress.

Myeoneuragi stands as the opposite of Danzi in many aspects. It’s not serialized in a regular platform, and it’s a fiction. It keeps itself dry from the start to the end in terms of directing, but as the emotion is not eased, it develops in a stuffier way.

Myeoneuragi is a Facebook webtoon dealing with the story of Min Sarin, a newly wed woman who moves into a house of her husband’s traditional family. According to the setting, the Facebook account is Min Sarin’s. The protagonist does her best to get on with the other members of the family, but she only suffers from them as they’re too inclined to patriarchy. The work enlightens the readers’ awareness by showing the stuffy situation without presenting an explanation or a commentary. For example, on a traditional holiday, the protagonist is in the kitchen and the men are not helping, just watching a baseball game. Meanwhile, a young daughter of her sister-in-law starts to wipe a table, and relatives compliments the child. In all of this scene, the protagonist never makes a monologue. The work thoroughly leaves everything into the readers’ judgement.

With this method, the work enables the readers to see the bad side of patriarchy more objectively. It makes the readers by themselves think about what problems the atmosphere of the family produces. The intention was quite clear, and it was successful. People prays for Myeoneulagi to be free from the stuffy life.

It is not common to have two similar-themed manhwas in Today’s Our Manhwa Award. Both works, Danzi and Myeoneulagi, are came from Korean family tradition of preferring a son. The reason why the stories not came out so far are now flowing out is, as finally the generation changes, many started to be aware that their family environment was unequal and imperfect, and now we have more space for them to write their own stories. The feminist issue of current generation is different from that of the past. The times of women giving up, saying ‘this is how things go’, are now long gone. Young people of these days know how to bring the issue on, sharing their own story.

In Korea, it is a fact that feminist issues caused much trouble, including the webtoon industry. However, the fact can’t be an excuse to deny that a notion of preferring a son, stemmed from patriarchy, affected our education at home for some degree. Everyone must have heard ‘because you’re a boy’ or ‘because you’re a girl’ for once, and forced to be take a gender-specified role. Artists are bringing such stories up in front of the public. It is definitely encouraging. Cho Jung-rae, a writer, once said:

 “Literature can change and develop the world; it must contribute to humanity; a novelist must resist to any inhuman thing.”

I believe comic artists are not an exception to that.