8 of the Best Korean Graphic Novels

We’re kicking things off with a funny graphic novel. It’s a slice-of-life type of story that shows three middle-aged mothers who want more than what the mediocre men in their life can give them. There’s Lee Soyeon, who divorced years ago but is now in another unfulfilling relationship. Myeong-ok, on the other hand, is having an affair with a younger man. And finally, Yeonjeong has her eye on someone from her gym (don’t tell her husband). They’re all bored with their conventional romances, so they go wild in a way more often attributed to twentysomethings. Through motels, nightclubs, and outrageous sexual encounters we follow these three women in their new honest and vulnerable adventures.

This is a very soft and bittersweet graphic novel about family and food. Umma’s Table follows a comic book writer named Madang, who moves to the countryside with his new family. His newborn baby changes his life, and what seems like a fresh start soon turns difficult. Madang’s parents are sick, and he constantly goes back to the city to care for them. It’s clear that Madang struggles to be a good husband, father and son simultaneously. So he throws himself into his cooking, reminiscing about his own upbringing and how his mother always had food on the table for him and his brother no matter what. It all feels like a thoughtful meditation on food and how it brings us together — bridging the gap between generations.

Graphic novels can be nonfiction too, and this is the frankly devastating kind. Grass is a story that documents the sexual slavery that some Korean women were subjected to during WWII by the Japanese Imperial Army, including a girl named Lee Okseon — who the author interviewed to make this graphic novel. Okseon was a child during the Japanese occupation, so we get to see the atrocities of this time through her vulnerable eyes. At the age of 15, she became a “comfort woman” for the military, which is basically a sanctioned form of sexual slavery. The author showcases this, but she also emphasizes Okseon’s strength and resilience to overcome it.

By the title you can probably already tell that this is the graphic novel in translation from Swedish I mentioned earlier. It’s also a memoir, and it discusses a time in the 1970s and ’80s when thousands of South Korean children were adopted internationally. One of those adoptees was Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom. She found her family in Sweden when she was only 2 years old. As she grew up, Lisa learned to suppress her curiosity for her home country. But a tiny thorn was left inside of her, and in this memoir, she explores her own feelings about the adoption. Especially since she discovered that she wasn’t an orphan without a background — when she sees her parents’ names on her birth certificate. This prompts Lisa to dig deeper into her own backstory, as she learns that the truth is more complicated than she ever imagined.

Banned Book Club is a graphic memoir that seems very relevant today, considering book bans are still a thing. The book is set during the 1980s, when South Korea was in the middle of a horrible totalitarian regime where people feared for their lives and protesters were publicly murdered. This was three years after the Gwangju Uprising (discussed in Human Acts by Han Kang if you’re interested in the political context) and things still looked bad for the population of South Korea. This is when Kim Hyun Sook entered college, and joined an underground banned book club. This is her story of relentless rebellion in the face of violence and fear. All through the joy of discovering great works of literature.