While the world of traditional printed Korean manhwa is still around, it's definitely nowhere near the size it was back in the heyday of the medium, i.e. from the 90s to the late-00s. Part of that was due to a double-blow in 1997, which saw both a financial crisis in Eastern Asia (though not Japan or China, interestingly enough) & exclusive to South Korea was the passing of a "Youth Protection Law" that seemingly went a little too far, in some regards. Because of this, & likely other factors, many manhwa magazines eventually went out of business by the late 90s or during the 00s, while even the most successful magazines either consolidated with sibling magazines, slowed down publication pace, or did both. For example, Seoul Cultural's IQ Jump went from weekly to biweekly in mid-2005, followed by Daewon C.I.'s Comic Champ (which had been Boys Champ until 2002) doing the same at the start of 2006, while Haksan Publishing's Chance & Booking magazines both went from biweekly to monthly in 2009, before simply getting fused together into its current form, Chance Plus, in 2012.
What has helped keep these old printed magazines still relevant in today's webtoon-obsessed market? Namely, they've always had some help from their Easterly neighbor...
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| Wait, in South Korea, Dragon Ball & One Piece are in... rival magazines?! Whaaaaaaaaaaaa........?????!!!! |
Yes, you are not seeing things. Shueisha does not have a singular publishing partner in South Korea, so ever since the 90s it's worked with Seoul Cultural, Daewon C.I, & Haksan. Because of that, while Dragon Ball has been associated with a magazine called "Jump" over there ever since 1989, & it even shares a home with Shogakukan's Detective Conan ("Dogs & cats living together; mass hysteria!"), titles like One Piece, Naruto, Boruto, & even Slam Dunk are associated with Champ, while something like Spy x Family currently runs in Chance Plus. However, also residing in those same magazines are homegrown Korean manhwa, some of which would thrive alongside their Japanese cohorts, so let's return to those long-running manhwa that actually did see English release, and see how much (or little) we actually received of some of the longest manhwa of all time. A couple of them are so long, in fact, that they even rival the likes of Naruto, Bleach, & Gintama; one not only surpasses them all, but is still running to this very day!
TokyoPop was responsible for a literal 2/3 of the titles in this second half, and it just so happens that the first five we'll be covering all come from that publisher.
In Part 1 we looked at Bride of the Water God, which was an example of sunjeong manhwa, which is South Korea's equivalent to shojo manga, so let's start off Part 2 with something that is not only still running (one of two we'll see in this half), but runs in what looks to be the very first sunjeong manhwa magazine! Launching in 1997, Party magazine is the second manhwa publication Haksan ever launched, essentially the female equivalent to Chance (Plus) magazine, and has been running monthly ever since 2009. In 2003 manhwaga Seomoon Da-Mi (this time working without her sister, Seomoon Da-Sil) debuted Rure, and is still serializing the series to this day, where it's currently at 35 volumes. TokyoPop would license Rure for English release, though it's lack of an actual ANN Encyclopedia page makes it tougher to find info regarding it. However, according to Amazon listings, TP only ever released the first three volumes between late 2007 & mid-2008, and if you remember from Part 1 I had mentioned that TP went through a company-wide restructuring around that latter time, which resulted in numerous titles getting axed, including any of the more recently-started manhwa; at least Rure managed to get more than one volume released, unlike Jade of Bango. Unfortunately, things aren't much better on the fan translation front, as only another two volumes would eventually get translated, plus the first chapter of Volume 6, with things stopping close to a decade ago. While Rure may possibly be an iconic sunjeong manhwa in its home country today, it's become nothing more than a statistic in North America.
We finally reach a manhwa that I not only have a real personal attachment to, but unlike something like NOW this actually received a continued slate of releases for a good while. Debuting back in 1999, Chronicles of the Cursed Sword by Yeo Beop-Ryong (story) & Park Hui-Jin (art), ran in Daewon's Junior Champ magazine until 2002, when that magazine went defunct, before getting moved to Comic Champ, where it'd eventually finish up in 2009 after 37 volumes. Much like Rebirth in Part 1, Cursed Sword was one of TokyoPop's earlier manhwa offerings, with Volume 1 coming out in mid-2003, and would see a bimonthly release schedule until early 2005, with everything after Volume 11 coming out every four months. Considering that the manhwa was already at Volume 20 by this point, I'd have to assume that sales had started to slow down more than TP had anticipated, in this case. Still, TokyoPop stuck with Cursed Sword all the way all the way until Volume 22's release in mid-2008, and the first three volumes were even re-released in omnibus form earlier that same year, also much like Rebirth. While I have tended to leave my own personal feelings out of these entries, mainly due to a lack of familiarity with most of these series, I will definitely say that Chronicles of the Cursed Sword was an excellent fantasy series that I absolutely enjoyed reading back in the 00s, and the fact that we never got to the end of it still makes me sad to this day. Volume 22 literally ends with a character seemingly being crushed under a gigantic rock during a fight, which seriously bears way too much similarity to what TokyoPop would go through from 2008 to 2011. As for fan translations, Cursed Sword did receive one that continued where TokyoPop left off at, though there's been no real consistency to it, with a chapter or two here, followed by a hiatus & then later a sudden surge, before going back on hiatus; it's currently somewhere around Volume 27.
Up next is a title that I definitely remember seeing on store shelves, & some anime con dealer room booths, often during the 00s, but honestly never really looked into, to the point that I completely forgot that this was even Korean. Anyway, Dragon Hunter by Seo Hong-Seok (which is actually a translation from the Korean Yongjab-i, and not an ateji-style phonetic reading!) looks to have run in IQ Jump magazine (at least, that's what I'd assume the "Jump Comics" label on the covers indicate) from 2000 to 2011 for a total of 39 volumes, with Volumes 34 to 39 altering the title slightly to Dragon Hunter SIN. This was yet another of TokyoPop's earlier manhwa licenses, with Volume 1 coming out in mid-2003, so now we're seeing a bit of a "second generation" of TokyoPop manhwa, no doubt spurred on by the success of Ragnarök & Priest; there's one more title from this pack we'll get to later on, as well. Similar to Cursed Sword, Dragon Hunter would receive a bimonthly release schedule up until mid-2005, bringing things up to Volume 12, after which things slowed down, also likely due to decreased sales, as the manhwa was at Volume 23 in Korea by mid-2005. However, Dragon Hunter suffered an even worse reduction in scheduling, as it would only see two new volumes every year from that point on, before things stopped completely after Volume 18's release in mid-2008. In fact, the manhwa hadn't even transitioned into the Dragon Hunter SIN renaming in Korea, at least by compiled volume count, by the time Volume 18 came out in English.
As for English fan translations of Dragon Hunter.... there are none whatsoever. That is literally a first across this entire list, which is honestly rather amazing.
The concept of a Wild West-influenced story in manga is by no means a rare thing, and various publishers have localized many of them in the past, like Et Cetera, Go West!, Gun Blaze West, Trigun, Grenadier, etc. Therefore, it's not surprising to see the same thing apply to manhwa, such as with Park Min-Seo's Western Shotgun. Running from 2000 to 2010 in Comic Champ, Western Shotgun would wind up totaling 40 volumes, easily making it one of the longest Wild West-inspired Asian comics of all time, and close to half way into its run TokyoPop would announce at Anime Expo 2004 that it had licensed the series. While said initial announcement was under its original name, by the time Volume 1 came out in mid-2005, TP had renamed it to Blazin' Barrels, and in this case I can absolutely understand the logic behind that, as the original Korean title would be kind of redundant in North America. Also of note is that Blazin' Barrels was an early title worked on by Adam Arnold, who would later move over to Seven Seas early in that publisher's life, and today is the current Editor-in-Chief there. In comparison to the prior titles covered, Blazin' Barrels started off with a seasonal release schedule, though that only lasted for the first eight volumes, with the next two being slowed down to essentially six months each. After Volume 10 in early 2008, though, TokyoPop pulled the reins on the manhwa, though Volume 11 did manage to get solicited; no cover art this time, however. As for fan translations, a "continue where the official release stopped at" effort was made that covered up into Volume 13, but it only lasted for a year between 2015 & 2016. Combined with our next entry, Western Shotgun could be looked at as part of TokyoPop's "third generation" of manhwa licenses, but in hindsight it really feels like this might have been a little too late to really capitalize on any remaining momentum that "first generation" originally had, and any "fourth generation" titles, like Jade of Bango or Rure, were just screwed over from the start.
Announced alongside Western Shotgun at Anime Expo 2004 was the manhwa Yureka by Son Hee-Joon (story) & Kim Youn-Kyung (art), which came from Chance magazine. Yureka would run from 2000 to 2013 for 41 volumes, so much like Western Shotgun this already had some length to it when TokyoPop licensed it; at least with its earlier manhwa, they were licensed comparatively earlier on. Just as before, the initial AX announcement saw it mentioned by its original Korean title, but by the time Volume 1 came out in mid-2005 it had been given a wildly different title, ID_eNTITY. I imagine this was done to possibly better reflect the virtual reality computer world that this series mainly takes place in, but this time around the name change was really for the worse, and simply comes off as trying too hard to sound hip & "with it", in regards to stuff like online culture at the time; the original title would have worked just fine, I feel. Once again, we see a "started off seasonal, before slowing down after a couple years" situation, though at least Yureka managed to see up through Volume 12 released by TokyoPop by mid-2008, so it fared slightly better than Wester Shotgun did. In all honesty, TokyoPop's main problem when it came to manhwa was that, aside from just licensing a crap ton of it, it tended to license numerous long-running series. Because of that, by the time these "third generation" licenses started seeing release, TP still had some of the prior licenses still going, so in order to make way for both to happen, it simultaneously slowed down the release schedule for the older licenses, while starting the newer licenses off at a slightly slower pace, in general. Also, while TP could get away with some obliviousness when it came to the older licenses, it knew full well that titles like Western Shotgun & Yureka were already nearing 20 volumes long when it licensed them, so it's arguable that it shouldn't have even licensed them, when it's already doing multiple long-running manhwa already. But, hey, hindsight is always 20/20, so let's just move on.
As for fan translations, Yureka actually did receive a more than decent one that eventually got all the way up to Volume 36, but it's since stalled out for years.
We finally break our streak of TokyoPop-licensed manhwa with something that was licensed by Central Park Media, and this is easily the longest-running comic that CPM ever licensed, regardless of which Asian country it came from. Not just that, but it's very serialization history is honestly rather complicated, so I'm not even sure if everything I found is 100% accurate. Debuting around 1996 or 1997, Mythology of the Heavens (which interestingly is titled in Korea with a combination of Hangul & Hanja) comes from Lee Hyun-Se, who had already been drawing manhwa since 1979, shortly after he finished serving his time in the Vietnam War. CPM also released some of Lee's prior work, like Hard-Boiled Agent & Nambul: War Stories, while his early IQ Jump series Armageddon (which CPM also released a small bit of) was one of the rare instances when South Korea actually made an anime adaptation of one of its manhwa, in this case a 1996 movie... Which Lee himself directed, wrote, & produced! Also, Mythology actually looked to have ran afoul of that Youth Protection Law I mentioned at the start, with Lee being initially found guilty, forced to stop the series & fined 3 million won (or roughly a little over $4,600 in 2021), though he later appealed in 2001 & was found in favor of, which allowed him to resume the series. This would eventually result in 47 volumes of content, though this looks to be a total across various sub-series, and CPM only ever released the first two volumes. In 2015, though, Lee revived the series over at Naver Webtoon, where it ran for 96 chapters, & today Lee looks to have retired from the manhwa industry, as he's currently a teacher for the Art & Animation Department of Sejong University in Seoul.
As for English fan translations, Mythology of the Heavens is much like Dragon Hunter in that there doesn't look to be a record of any ever existing.
One last TokyoPop-licensed manhwa to cover here, so it's fitting that it's also the longest manhwa that TP ever attempted. Debuting in 2001, King of Hell came from the duo of Ra In-Soo (story) & Kim Jae-Hwan (art) & ran in Comic Champ all the way until 2015, totaling 55 volumes; the Korean title, Majeh, is both the word used for a "King of Hell", as well as the lead character's name. I've seen mention that King of Hell also ran in the web magazine Champ D, so it's possible that the manhwa moved from print to digital sometime during its serialization. Much like Rebirth & Chronicles of the Cursed Sword, King of Hell was another of TokyoPop's "second generation" licenses & saw its first volume released in mid-2003, but unlike those two it didn't keep a bimonthly schedule for long. In fact, once 2004 started the manhwa immediately switched over to a seasonal pace, which it kept until 2006, when it then switched over to seemingly whatever pace TokyoPop wanted to give it. 2006 & 2007 only saw three new volumes each, but then in 2008 it suddenly switched back to seasonal, and then Volume 22 came out in February of 2009, just two months after Volume 21! Not just that, but Volumes 23 to 25 all got solicited at a bimonthly rate for 2009, so I have no idea what TokyoPop were thinking, by this point; this manhwa also received a Volume 1-3 omnibus in early 2008. Unfortunately, despite Volume 23 getting cover art for it shown, nothing past Volume 22 ever came out, just as with Rebirth & Cursed Sword, leaving the last 33 volumes without official release. Luckily, King of Hell seemingly managed to find itself a dedicated fanbase, as in 2010 a fan translation effort not only continued from where TokyoPop left off at, but actually managed to eventually translate all the way to the very end by the start of 2019; way to go!
Also, while King of Hell never got finished by TokyoPop, Kim Jae-Hwan did get hired to draw the art for a series of Warcraft comics that TokyoPop released from 2005 to 2009, with Richard A. Knaack, a fantasy novelist who had previously worked with TokyoPop for the translation of the Ragnarök manhwa, handling the writing.
Bringing up the rear are the other two ADV-licensed manhwa that I mentioned back in Part 1 when I covered Change Guy/Quantum Mistake... And, boy, did ADV bite off more than it could ever possibly have hoped to chew! Case in point being The Boss by Lim Jae-Won, which debuted in Comic Champ, back when it was still Boys Champ, in 1996. By the time ADV announced the license as part of that insane 37-title press release in early 2004, Lim's series was already around 33 volumes long, meaning that it had already surpassed even the longest Japanese manga ADV had already licensed. ADV would only ever release the first three volumes later that same year, before putting it on ice, but over in South Korea The Boss continued on, because it had already become one of the biggest hits in that country. Eventually, though, Lim Jae-Won would put an end to The Boss... in 2014, after 74 volumes! That puts The Boss as equal in length to Bleach, surpassing the length of Naruto, and from what I can tell it's considered one of the most iconic manhwa to run in Boys/Comic Champ, which is honestly rather impressive, since from what I can tell this is essentially a delinquent action series. Therefore, The Boss is pretty much South Korea's equivalent to something like Hiroshi Takahashi's Crows x Worst franchise, and even that only really approaches The Boss' length after you include all of the various spin-off & side story manga, as the titular titles themselves only total to 59 volumes.
However, despite how little of this iconic manhwa ADV actually released in English, it still surpasses what little fan translation effort was ever attempted for The Boss, which apparently didn't even make it all the way through Volume 3.
However, even The Boss pales in comparison to our final long-running manhwa, one that looks to honestly be the longest-running Korean manhwa in history. I had brought up Daewon C.I.'s Young Champ magazine before with Faeries' Landing back in Part 1, and from the title you can understandably guess that it's the "seinen" equivalent to Boys/Comic Champ, ala Shonen Jump & Young Jump. Well, the very first issue of Young Champ back in May of 1994 also saw the debut of Yeolhyeol Gangho/Hot-Blooded Jianghu by Jeon Geuk-Jin (story) & Yang Jae-Hyun (art), and if you're familiar with Chinese wuxia terminology then the title kind of explains exactly what it's about: A comedic martial arts action series featuring exciting fights. From what info I can find online, this is essentially Daewon's "representative work" & the highest-selling printed manhwa of all time, currently sitting at over 5 million copies sold; yes, that's nothing compared to most successful manga, but different markets & all. It also received an MMORPG based on it in 2004, which even saw release in English under the title Scions of Fate & saw as many as over 600,000 simultaneous players at one point. However, most telling of the success of Yeolhyeol Gangho is the fact that the manhwa is still running to this very day, outliving Young Champ's death in 2013 & moving over to Comic Champ, and today it is currently at 84 volumes & counting!!!! Yes, this manhwa is longer than the likes of Kosaku Shima, Tough, The Prince of Tennis, Gintama, Kaiji, Ace of Diamond, Kinnikuman, & Yowamushi Pedal, and that's even after totaling up the various entries of some of these series. Not just that, but Yeolhyeol Gangho has also managed to maintain a dedicated English-speaking fanbase, as fan translations for the manhwa actually keep up-to-date with new chapters as they come out, though I'm not fully sure if everything from the very beginning is technically translated.
So, how much of this industry-defining manhwa, one that's celebrated by many the world over, did ADV Manga manage to release, under the name The Ruler of the Land? Three...whole...volumes, all in the first half of 2004. At least Ablaze Publishing is now releasing The Breaker, another of Jeon Geuk-Jin's manhwa (& also one that's highly acclaimed), and I imagine that will get fully released.
Wild how THIS wasn't chosen as one of the manhwa Crunchyroll helped produce anime for, right? I mean, Naver does offer it digitally as well...
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And with that we come to the end of a concept that, much like the various manga publishers I mentioned, put me in way over my head. When I first came up with this idea, I honestly thought it'd only be something like 9 or 10 long-running manhwa I'd come across. My logic for that was "Well, why would any English manga publisher purposefully grab a manhwa that's already known to be super-long, having as many as 30+ volumes already out by the time they'd start releasing in English, when manhwa was understandably not going to be quite as popular as manga?"...
Turns out I underestimated the galaxy-brained likes of TokyoPop, CPM, or (especially) ADV. I'm not saying that none of these long-running manhwa, especially the ones covered in this second half, should have never been given an chance officially in English, but it certainly created a simple conundrum of "How the hell do we release something this long?!". Unfortunately, the 00s was the time when doing something like omnibusing longer series from the start, something that's more common to see happen today, was more or less unheard of, and you also have to remember that (as ComicsOne or Infinity Studios showed) the entire market was effectively physical-only during that time. Is there a way today for manhwa like these to be given a second chance? Possibly, but with webtoons now dominating things, & soon to be given their own physical options, we will likely never see that happen.
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