Comics artists hold online exhibition to show solidarity with HK protesters

A screen capture from “Hong Kong Spring,” an online comics exhibition held to show solidarity with democracy activists in Hong Kong Screen Capture from Hong Kong Spring

By Park Ji-won

A group of comics artists and illustrators gathered to show solidarity with pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, holding an online exhibition through June 25.

The artists, including Ko Il-kwon who publishes a webtoon on Naver, began releasing 17 original short comics online for free from April 3 to June 25. The artworks were themed on democracy movements held largely in the 1980s in Korea and currently underway in Hong Kong. To date, the works are written in Korean, but their English versions will start coming out today.

They started raising funds through crowdsourcing in February and raised about 5 million won from 148 participants so that they could get paid for their work and operate the website. The pieces will be published as a book in May and given to their donors.

The move came amid a months-long fierce confrontation between activists and the government in Hong Kong over an extradition law and democracy that began last June. There have been many campaigns among civic activists in Korea to support the democracy protests in Hong Kong so far.

Lee Jae-min, a comics critic

Lee Jae-min, a comics critic and organizer of the exhibition, said he and the comics artists agreed to share Korea's experiences with pro-democracy movements in the past and urge people to pay attention and show solidarity with the democracy movement in Hong Kong.

“As we learned lessons from the Gwangju Uprising, a Korean democracy movement in 1980, those activities of Hong Kong citizens will pave a way to victory in history… We want to deliver the message that (Korean people) are well aware that Hong Kong citizens are participating in the pro-democracy protests and Koreans are ready to help them,” Lee said during a recent phone interview with The Korea Times.

To commemorate the historic events in Korea, he decided to open the website on April 3, the anniversary of the Jeju Uprising and Massacre which began in 1948, and close it on June 25 when the Korean War began in 1950.

On why they are holding the exhibition online, Lee said “I thought it was important to share the artwork with as many people as possible, so that they can be read by especially those living overseas including Hong Kong… That's another reason that we planned to release all artwork online and both in Korean and English…. We also learned about the movements in Hong Kong through online media and thought it might be a good way to respond to them with the same way through online.”

He stressed that comics can be a good way to express opinions as they are somewhat understandable beyond languages, and comics artists normally don't belong to any management companies so they can raise their voices without any pressure.

However, he was originally planning to hold the event in January, but it was delayed due to the spread of the coronavirus. Also, he had to delay the exhibition after some comics artists refused to participate as they were afraid of pressures from China as they are currently releasing comics in China.

“We don't blame the artists (who refused to release their artwork for the exhibition) because they also work in China. We are aware of bad news like game services shutdown (due to the political issues).”

Lee hopes the whole process of organizing the exhibition and the set of 17 comics can be seen as a story itself to help the Hong Kong protesters. “As we ended up publishing one single book with different stories, we hope Hong Kong will also have their one democratized country as they want.”