There's a Whole "Sesang" Out There: North America's History with Korea's Long-Running Manhwa Part 1

On November 18, 2021 it was announced by Wattpad Webtoon Studios that it would launch the "Webtoon Unscrolled" imprint, which would release popular & successful webtoons, a type of manhwa (South Korea's equivalent to Japan's manga) in physical & digital graphic novels, rather than only have them be available in the scrollable "infinite canvas" online format that they have become popular with. Today, whenever anyone thinks of manhwa they instantly think of webtoons, but that concept is actually relatively recent, having only been introduced in 2003 (& not leaving South Korea officially until 2014), while the concept of South Korean comics has been around for much longer than that. The term "manhwa" first came about in the 1920s, while the first manhwa magazine, Manhwa Haengjin ("Comic Parade"), didn't happen until 1948 (though it was quickly shut down), & South Korea's first "boy's manhwa" magazine wasn't until 1988 with Seoul Cultural Publisher's IQ Jump; it's never been confirmed to be named after Shonen Jump, but we all know the truth. From IQ Jump's debut to the time when webtoons started to really overtake printed manhwa (which looks to be around 2010 or so), South Korea had its own competitive printed comic industry that went by mostly unnoticed by the rest of the world... Until the turn of the millennium, that is.

While in Japan it's Sunday, Magazine, & Jump,
in South Korea it's Chance, Champ, &... Jump.
Some things are universal, I guess.

Starting in the early 00s, during the original North American manga boom, numerous manga publishers started licensing various manhwa, in an attempt to expand out into other countries' take on comics; a handful also tried out Chinese manhua. While some series did see great success in English during this time, like Ragnarök by Lee Myung-Jin & Priest by Hyung Min-Woo, most manhwa were seemingly looked at by North American manga fans at the time as nothing more than second-rate, or even seen as "bootleg manga" because of its country of origin, which is unfortunate; luckily, manhwa has continued to see occasional release in English to this day. However, while many shorter manhwa did manage to see complete release (or eat least mostly-complete release) during the 00s, & today most manhwa released in English are shorter series, it should be remembered that manhwa is indeed an entire industry in South Korea, and while webtoons are now the primary way people read them there are still print manhwa magazines to this day, with the big three being Daewon C.I.'s Comic Champ (which debuted in 1991), Haksan Publishing's Chance Plus (its legacy reaching back to 1995), & the aforementioned IQ Jump. In fact, Daewon, Haksan, & Seoul Cultural were where the majority of manhwa were licensed from during the 00s. Because of that history, there are obviously various manhwa that wound up running for long periods of time, & some are even are still running to this day.

Unbeknownst to most, a good number of those long-running manhwa did see English release at one point or another, but unfortunately pretty much all of them wound up being unfinished over here; some got a decent amount released, while others barely went anywhere. So let's take a general look at all the ones I could identify, with a minimum length of 20 volumes, and see how each one of them fared.

Out of all the manga publishers that tried their hand at manhwa, the most prolific was easily TokyoPop, which licensed & released close to 70 different series between 2002 & 2009. While TP's track record for actually finishing them was a little spotty, though by no means the worst, & generally the shorter series did tend to be fully released, TP was also the publisher that usually gave the longer series the chance to actually see a decent percentage released in English. However, that last part is not true for Mong Hwan Baek Seo/Book of Dreams, which TP released in English as Jade of Bango, named after the power the female main character wields. This series by the sister duo of Yim Ae-Ju (story) & Yim Jin-Ju (art) debuted in 2003 & would run in Chance magazine until 2011 for 20 volumes, but TokyoPop would only ever release a single volume in mid-2008. By this point, TP started slowing down its manhwa releases, due to a company-wide restructuring, and would stop releasing manhwa in general by mid-2009, so it was screwed over right out of the gate, though obviously not intentionally; it just came out at the worst possible time. Fan translation efforts were attempted afterwards, but stopped close to a decade ago, only getting to the start of Volume 4. I normally don't bring up fan translations too much on this blog, outside of acknowledging when they're used for review, but I think it will help explain some extra context regarding how manhwa are looked at by English-speaking manga fandom, so I will bring them up here when fitting.

One company that's often forgotten actually had a manga & manhwa division was Central Park Media, and to CPM's credit it tended to stick with shorter series, not that it meant that CPM always finished releasing them. However, it did wind up giving a couple of long-running manhwa a chance, one of which being Yongbi the Invincible (which is essentially a direct translation of the original Korean title), an action series by Giun Ryu (story) & Mun Jeong Hoo (art) that originally debuted in 1996 & was published by Haksan. CPM would put out the first three volumes in 2004, and even solicited up to Volume 5 (complete with cover art), but never returned to it. In South Korea, though, Yongbi is actually kind of a big deal, as this series would run until 2002 for 23 volumes before getting a second series from 2006 to 2013 called Yongbi the Invincible Oejeon (the Korean word of Gaiden/Side Story), which ran for an additional 12 volumes & was done by Mun exclusively. Then, in 2015, Giun & Mun created Gosu (The Master), a story taking place in the same world as Yongbi (that fans now call the "Gosuverse", apparently) which ran as a webtoon for a total 231 chapters across two seasons, and even has an official English release via Line Webtoon. As for the original Yongbi the Invincible, fan translation efforts did eventually cover the entire series, using the 15-volume re-release from 2010 as the basis, and some bit of Oejeon was also translated, but stalled a few years ago.

Up next is a curious case, as it's NOT a part of the 00s manga boom, but rather is from the current boom that manga is in the midst of here in North America... and it's not a webtoon! Running in Comic Champ, Witch Hunter by Cho Jung-Man debuted back in 2006 & is actually still running to this day, currently at 23 volumes, possibly an impressive feat for a post-webtoon era print manhwa; in Korean, the hangul used pronounce exactly as "Witch Hunter", similar to ateji in Japanese. Seven Seas would license the manhwa in 2013 & release it via 2-in-1 omnibuses, but shortly after starting the release had to change the name to Witch Buster, due to other comics already using the "Witch Hunter" name in North America; this only affected the logo & title, however, not the translation itself. Seven Seas would release Witch Buster consistently throughout 2013 & 2014, covering the first 14 volumes, before slowing things down to once-per-year for 2015 & 2016, due to catching up with South Korea. Unfortunately, after the ninth omnibus came out in late 2016, covering up to Volume 18, the releases have since dried up, despite there being enough content to produce another two omnibuses, at least. Not just that, but Seven Seas has also only ever released the first six volumes digitally, acknowledging exactly that in April of 2017; however, said digital releases look to have since disappeared. People have tried asking Seven Seas over on Twitter about the future of Witch Buster every now & then, but the publisher has never responded to any of them, so who knows if it will ever return, as it's so (relatively) close to catching up again, even after five years. However, fan translation efforts for Witch Hunter continue on to this day, and look to be close to where it currently is in South Korea, where it's published bi-weekly.

When I first started getting into manga & manhwa during the mid-00s, I honestly don't recall ever coming across this series, but turns out it's one of those long-runners that TokyoPop actually stuck with for a more-than-decent length. Debuting back in 1999 in Daewon's Young Champ magazine, which turned into a web magazine back in 2009, Faeries' Landing by You Hyun is a curious case, as from what I can tell it effectively went into an indefinite hiatus after Volume 23, & looks like it may never finish, as You Hyun has since moved on to other works, both in South Korea & Japan. However, I literally can't find any indications that there ever were actual compiled books made for Volumes 20 to 23 (not even cover art), as the furthest I can find goes up to Volume 19 in 2007... Which is exactly where TokyoPop got up to during its release of the manhwa from late 2003 to mid-2008; also of note is that TP changed the various Korean fairy tale terminology to ones familiar to Western readers. While I've already brought up how TP found itself in restructuring around the time of Volume 19's release, it could also be possible that, without any further compiled volumes existing, TokyoPop was actually unable to continue releasing any more of Faeries' Landing. As for fan translations, TokyoPop actually outdid any of those, leaving everything beyond Volume 19 unknown to English-speaking fans to this day, if said content even exists.

Dark Horse Comics also tried its hand at releasing manhwa, just five in total, but (in true Dark Horse fashion) only managed to actually finish two of them: Shaman Warrior & Banya: The Explosive Delivery Man. The longest one it attempted, though, was Bride of the Water God by Yun Mi-Kyung, our first example here of a sunjeong manhwa/"pure comic", the Korean equivalent of a shojo manga; said "Water God" in the original Korean title is Habaek. It ran from 2006 to 2014 for 24 volumes in Seoul Cultural's Wink magazine (the Ribon or Margaret to IQ Jump's Shonen Jump, if you will), and was actually a bit of a big deal in South Korea. Yun received a "Best New Artist" award for it, the series became the best-selling sunjeong manhwa in 2006, and it even received a 16-episode modern-day live-action K-drama reinterpretation in 2017. It's not really a surprise that it'd get licensed for English release, though Dark Horse was definitely from out of left field, as this was apparently the publisher's very first shojo/sunjeong title ever; DH is traditionally known more for action series, after all. Still, Dark Horse did stick with Bride of the Water God, starting in late 2007 & continuing all the way until Volume 17 in mid-2015. Looking at its release history, Dark Horse was slightly erratic, as a single year could range from one to three new books, and Volume 17 didn't actually come out until all prior books were given a digital release via eBook; in fact, I'm not even sure if Volume 17 even got a digital release! Since then, Dark Horse has yet to release another volume of Bride of the Water God, leaving the last 7 volumes without a release. On the fan translation front, they were actually usually ahead of Dark Horse, but more or less stopped happening with any regularity around the same time Volume 17 came out officially. The last new fan translation was in April of 2020, covering into Volume 22, leaving roughly the last 20 chapters to only those who can read Hangul.

Also of note is that the company Net Comics has since rescued & digitally re-released some of the manhwa that Dark Horse had licensed before, even finishing the ones that were abandoned, but Bride of the Water God is sadly NOT one of those.

We finally reach a manhwa that I have some personal familiarity with, at least tangentially, as a friend of mine was collecting this series as it was coming out. Running from 1998 to 2010 for 26 volumes in Comic Champ, Rebirth by Lee Kang-Woo was, from my recollection, one of the more notable manhwa that came out during the 00s manga boom. Licensed by TokyoPop, which oddly referred to the manhwaga as simply "Woo" on each cover,  the manhwa started seeing English release in early 2003, making it one of the earliest manhwa released that'll get covered here, and it maintained a relatively steady bi-monthly release schedule all the way up through Volume 17 in early 2006. After that, things slowed down immensely, though considering that Lee Kang-Woo was still making the manhwa over in South Korea by this point, it's probably safe to assume that it was more a case of TokyoPop simply catching up to Korea. Anyway, books would continue to come out, including a re-release of Volumes 1 to 3 as an omnibus in early 2008 (something that TokyoPop did with a few manhwa, likely in an attempt to revitalize sales), but after Volume 22's release in early 2009 things came to a halt. By this point, Rebirth was up to Volume 24 in South Korea, and in the next year or so would come to an end, making this the closest a long-running manhwa has had at having its entire story released in English; remember, Faeries' Landing was apparently never properly finished in Korea, either. Admittedly, even if TokyoPop had continued releasing Rebirth, it likely would have only gotten to Volume 25, before the publisher entered its hibernation period for the majority of the 2010s; I'd argue that it's worse to be that close to being done, but never finishing. Still, it does suck that Rebirth was left with only four volumes untranslated, and even the small fan translation effort doesn't change things at all.

If there were ever a manhwa that I feel deserved the "re-release what's out there & finish what's left, even if only digitally" treatment, ala Initial D or Drops of God, it'd be Rebirth.

ADV only ever licensed & released a scant eight manhwa during its (admittedly brief) stint as a book publisher during the 00s... and, from what I can tell, never fully released a single one of them; that's just as bad as Udon Entertainment was with manhwa. Not just that, but three of them were pretty large series to start with, and our first entry (the only one for this half) only ever saw a single volume released! Debuting back in 1998 & published by Daewon, Change Guy by Son Eu-Ho (story) & Choi Myung-Su (art) would run all the way until 2006, totaling 31 volumes, likely due to its "transformation" from body swap comedy into seemingly a straight-up delinquent action title. ADV would then license it in 2004, announcing it as part of a giant 37-title acquisition press release! I already brought this up in the manga license rescue list last month, but who in their right mind thought that announcing 37 different manga & manhwa all at once was a smart idea?! Anyway, ADV would release the first volume of Change Guy later that same year, though under the altered title of Quantum Mistake, which is honestly just really, really bad & comes off like no one at ADV really "got" this manhwa. Since this is ADV Manga we're talking about, no more volumes ever came out, despite the next two being solicited & localized cover art for Volume 2 even being shown. Quite honestly, ADV may have had a great title that it just never gave a proper chance, as Change Guy got fully fan translated into English well over a decade ago, showing that there was at least some sort of fanbase for it, at the time. Luckily, this is the last time a "one volume wonder" ever happened for a truly long-running manhwa that we'll be covering in these two parts, so at least there's that; we'll get some 2-3 volume runs, but nothing less from here on out.

We're ending Part 1 with what's technically a two-part entry that I'm totaling the amount of volumes for, but that's simply because they're directly related to each other, both were left unfinished, & they involve two different (though semi-related) publishers, so this gets a little complicated. ComicsOne started up in 1999 with a rather wild concept: Release Asian comics in North America exclusively as digital releases via Adobe-compatible eBooks, i.e. PDFs; again, this was in 1999! To no surprise, this didn't pan out well at the time, so the publisher started releasing titles physically in 2001. Marketing manager Nicole Curry seriously saw the future, though, saying "We think e-books are going to be a lot more popular in the future"; it just took another decade or so. Anyway, around the same time ComicsOne went physical, IQ Jump magazine saw the debut of a new series, NOW by Park Sung-Woo, which was the follow up to a prior hit manhwa Park had just finished up. ComicsOne would license NOW relatively early in its run & start releasing it in late 2003, putting out the first five volumes over a year. However, ComicsOne would go out of business by March of 2005, but later that June NOW would get rescued by Infinity Studios, which had previously worked with ComicsOne to co-publish another of Park Sung-Woo's manhwa, Peigenz.

Totally not confusing, right? I mean, Infinity's covers feature the Hangul,
so they're completely different. Absolutely worth it, instead of new volumes.

However, while Infinity did promise to continue where ComicsOne left off, it also outright panned the prior publisher's work in a press release, calling it of "poor quality" with "an incredible amount of missing translations and mistranslations", so not only was Volume 6 in the works, but there would also be higher-quality re-releases of the first five volumes. Unfortunately, it'd take another whole year for Volume 1's re-release & Volume 6 to actually come out in mid-2006, two years after ComicsOne's Volume 5 in late 2004, and it'd take another entire year just to re-release Volumes 2 & 3 across 2007, with no brand new content coming out at all that year. Honestly, anyone who cared about NOW by this point, like myself at that time, had just given up on supporting the series; the publisher was so obsessed with starting from scratch that it shot itself in the foot. Come 2008, Infinity Studios wasn't in good shape, and that February announced that it'd be releasing nearly all of its upcoming books exclusively as PDF eBooks, just as ComicsOne had done almost a whole decade prior; talk about coming full circle. By this point, Park Sung-Woo had just finished NOW, which totaled 25 volumes. Yes, NOW had been licensed early in the manhwa's life, but by the time it finished in 2008 we barely got more than 20% in English, most of which had initially come out early on; a more competent publisher could have gotten about three times as many books out by early 2008. Due to the absurd fashion in which Infinity Studios actually planned to release these eBooks (They were literally shipped to buyers on burned CDs!), & the general ambiguity as to when the publisher actually went out of business, it's impossible to know if any of these digital releases actually happened, though the re-releases of Volume 4 & 5 and the first-time releases of Volumes 7 to 9 were at least scheduled throughout 2008. However, this is only half (more like 2/3) of the story... Remember that "prior hit manhwa Park had just finished up" I had previously mentioned?

As indicated, NOW is related to the manhwa Park Sung-Woo had worked on just before, Chun Rhang Yhur Jhun/The Biography of Sirius; specifically, NOW takes place 20 years later. Park had done CRYJ from 1997 to 2000 in IQ Jump for 13 volumes, before getting re-released in a 10-volume special edition in 2003. Simply put, CRYJ was honestly kind of a big deal during its run, and when combined with NOW looks to be one of the most iconic manhwa to ever run in that magazine; CRYJ was even adapted into an strategy RPG for PCs in 2003! Therefore, Infinity Studios felt that it wasn't just enough to license rescue NOW, but it also had to license the series that came first, announcing that it had done so in November of 2005; specifically, Infinity had licensed the 10-volume special edition. However, right from the get-go Infinity Studios made the biggest mistake it could... It kept the original Korean title! Yes, despite the press release actually including an English title of "Sirius Wars", which honestly would have worked just fine, Infinity advertised the license & upcoming release under the Chun Rhang Yhur Jhun name. I imagine that the logic of the people at Infinity was something along the lines of "Well, some publishers are releasing Japanese manga under their original titles, so why not do the same for a Korean manhwa?", without realizing that said logic falls apart because Japanese & Korean are different languages & most Japanophiles, like manga fans, DON'T KNOW KOREAN! Just because titles like Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, & Yu-Gi-Oh! succeeded with their Japanese titles unchanged, that wouldn't automatically equate to a Korean title working, especially one that doesn't quite roll off the tongue to most English-speaking audiences, like Chun Rhang Yhur Jhun. That being said, though, anime fans cried foul at the thought of ADV releasing the first Utawarerumono anime as "Shadow Warrior Chronicles" so harshly that ADV actually decided to leave the name untranslated, and this was around the same exact time as Infinity was releasing CRYJ.

Regardless, Infinity Studios would start releasing CRYJ in mid-2006, just before the NOW releases started happening, and would put out the first five volumes at roughly a twice-per-year rate. Volume 5 even managed to come out physically in 2008, AFTER Infinity had moved over to eBook-only releases; I did say "nearly all". However, Volumes 6 & 7 were only ever scheduled as eBook-exclusives, so who knows if those ever actually happened; I can't recall anyone ever saying that they got CDs from Infinity Studios. Really, Infinity Studios just took on way too much at once (& was too anal-retentive about what came before), and suffered for it, despite the actual releases themselves being admittedly great. As for fan translations, both NOW & CRYJ never went beyond what Infinity Studios put out, leaving what looks to be Park Sung-Woo's collective magnum opus more or less unknown to English readers.

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I had originally planned for all of this to be just a single piece, but as you can see things quickly grew much larger than I thought it would be; turns out we got way more long-running manhwa than I had originally thought. So check back in next week as we take a look at another nine manhwa that went even longer than any of these did, whether it was 30+, 40+, 50+, 70+, or even 80+ volumes!

These English manga publishers truly were way in over their heads.