[Korea Encounters] Saving children from 'unhealthy' comics in the 1960s and 1970s

Children burn comic books after one of their classmates killed himself attempting to mimic a comic book character, in this photo published Feb. 4, 1972. / Korea Times archive

By Matt VanVolkenburg

Amid rapid urbanization in the 1960s and 1970s, a popular "playground" for children was the comic book reading room where, for a few won, they could sit and read comic books.

Parents and educators were less than happy with this, however, both for the time it took away from studying and because of the "unpalatable" nature of the reading material, which they feared would impair children's spiritual development. Particularly criticized were comics depicting "robbery, theft, sword play by Japanese samurai and even obscene bed scenes."

In late 1961, shortly after Park Chung-hee's coup d'etat, the Cartoon Ethics Commission for Juveniles was formed to carry out pre-publication censorship of comic books.

Children read comic books in a shop in this photo published May 26, 1968. / Korea Times archive

By 1964 the reading rooms had added another attraction: TV sets. About 10 percent of Seoul's estimated 1,000 comic stores had TVs, and every night these stores were "jammed with children" willing to pay extra to watch wrestling, boxing or movies.

In May that year, 21 of 50 children in one such room were injured when the floor collapsed. After this a campaign spread among comic book store owners to remove TVs from their stores so as to "guide the children morally and to let them concentrate on study." TVs remained in many reading rooms, however, and in May 1966 one made the news when a nine-year-old stabbed his friend in the chest while arguing over a better seat in front of the TV.

The owner of a comic book store removes a TV from his store in Jeongneung-dong, northeastern Seoul, in response to a public campaign trying to encourage children to focus on homework, in this photo published May 27, 1964. / Korea Times archive

In August 1965, Seoul police launched a city-wide investigation into 16 comic book companies to counter the publication of "unhealthy books." They also raised accusations of negligence against the Korea Comic Book Ethics Council over lax censorship. According to police, of the 1 million copies of 500 comic books published every month and distributed to 4,900 comic stores nationwide, 70 percent were bad for children.

No doubt aware of the bad press, in late May 1966 an association of comic lenders gathered 2,000 comic books from neighborhood shops and burned them days later at a children's playground on Mount Nam as part of the children's guidance movement.

In early 1968 the National Council of Korean Women took up the cause of "purifying" comic books. Declaring that "A comic book is a child's methadone," they described most comics as "poorly-edited," of "low-quality," and "lacking in creativity." One member found that of 200 comics, 54 featured gunmen and 47 featured violence. Another study found that of 547 students in grades 3 to 5, about 40 percent read comic books every day, while another 30 percent read them frequently.

In early 1969, police proposed that the Korean Children's Cartoons Ethics Committee institute pre-publication censorship of all comics and recommended Seoul's 2,000 comic stores operate under a license system, voluntarily remove "unhealthy" comics by a deadline, and allocate 30 percent of shelves to cultural books. They also hoped to "utilize the medium for education of children in traffic rules and the duty to inform on spies."

Children read comic books at a "shabby roadside shop" in Seoul in this photo published Aug. 5, 1965. / Korea Times archive

This was not the first time spies and comics had been linked. In April 1967 it was reported that North Korean attempts to disrupt the upcoming presidential election included the distribution of not only flyers and posters, but also comic books. In one of these "dangerous" comic books, titled "Hong Gil-dong," the Vietnam War was described as an "invasion" by the U.S. and South Korea. It was made to look as if it were published in Seoul by the Kukmin Printing Co., which turned out to be fake. Though only one such comic had been discovered after it was shown to a government official by his son, all Seoul police were ordered to "ferret out seditious comic books."

In early 1972 the threat of comics again became a social issue after a 12-year-old strangled himself while imitating a comic book character who returned to life after being killed. In response, Seoul police seized 20,440 comic books printed by unregistered publishers from 517 shops in a surprise nighttime raid. While the Korean Housewives' Club called for a nationwide campaign against such comics, students at a school in Seoul marched through the streets with a banner decrying bad comics and then burned hundreds of comics in the schoolyard.

In contrast to such attitudes towards children's comics, newspaper cartoons were extremely popular with adults, so much so that one study found that 97 percent of Dong-A Ilbo readers turned to the cartoon "Kobau" first. In March 1973, U.S. Ambassador Philip Habib sent a cable to the State Department containing a selection of newspaper cartoons, particularly "Kobau," writing that they were "one of the few places in the public media where one can find criticism of the government these days." He assumed that "government censors feel that such mildly amusing jibes serve as a useful safety valve for popular gripes and frustrations."

Matt VanVolkenburg has a master's degree in Korean studies from the University of Washington. He is the blogger behind populargusts.blogspot.kr.