Jung Hanna

EPISODE 1. INTTRODUCTION

Before I became a mother, I serialized a long cartoon in the webtoon corner of Naver, Korea’s largest portal site. It wasn’t that popular either then, but I didn’t care much because I was happy and making a living by drawing cartoons was always natural and so obvious to me. So I believed I could serialise a new comic series I had planned while taking a break for several years with getting pregnant, giving birth, raising children and move to Italy.

However, the Korean cartoon market changed a lot while I was away, It was quite difficult to find a place for me. In Korean webtoon market right now, several people work as a team under a large production company, each taking charge of a part of the comics. It had become a market overflowing with largescale creative productions that usually produced high-quality and long cartoons based on famous novels and connected to games or dramas after the serialisation. The planned my work eventually fell through, and I was in despair for a while.

I started working on the paintings I had always been interested in, and although I enjoyed it a lot, the desire to draw and tell stories through comics did not go away, so I drew this first episode.

And for your information, the format of this comic is based the most common style in Korea, which is to anticipate readers who would read the comic by scrolling up and down on the screen or clicking to move to the next frame through website serialization, so there are margins at the top and bottom of the page, but I tried to edit it to match the print format as much as possible. I would appreciate it if you could take that into consideration.

I debuted as a cartoonist in 2009—the year I graduated—just as Korea’s webtoon market was emerging. My work was part of that digital wave, which means I belong to an in-between generation largely unfamiliar with the print comics industry’s ecosystem.
Today, even beyond webtoons, the rise of streaming platforms has made it paradoxically harder for audiences to directly purchase and own works by small-scale creators without going through corporate intermediaries. For niche or out-of-trend creations, physical purchase options often don’t exist. Even when creators self-publish digitally, platforms like Amazon Kindle or Webtoon take 30–50% cuts—a far cry from print’s consignment model.

Digital distribution theoretically increases reach, but it cedes control to algorithms set by public preference and the corporate platforms. For small creators, this often leaves piracy as the only viable way for audiences to access their work—trapping them in an endless cycle of limited markets and unauthorized sharing. It makes me question whether this is the right way to create and consume.