Anyone who has spent too much time thinking about shoujo manga knows about the 24-nengumi - sometimes known in English as the "Magnificent 49ers" - a group of women who revolutionized their genre in the 1970s with grand themes and literary bent. You might even have read some of the many titles of theirs that have been scanlated in recent years.

Those who have read enough of those to be familiar with their general feel probably don't draw much comparison between them and the Korean equivalent of shoujo, soonjung manhwa. That might be blamed on the kinds of series most people in the English-speaking fandom have access to: lots and lots of Hwang Mi-Ri and Han Yu-Rang, mostly. So it might be surprising to know that soonjung manhwa experienced a rebirth in the 1980s remarkably similar to the one the 24-nengumi brought to shoujo manga a decade before, with series that had enough psychological depth to take on Hagio Moto any day.

The women who facillitated this rebirth aren't as clearly-defined as the 24-nengumi, but they include Kim Jin, Kim Hyerin, Hwang Mi-Na, Shin Eelsuk, and Kang Gyunguk. Only Hwang Mi-Na has a work translated into English, Redmoon. I picked up a volume of Redmoon at a used bookstore. I think it's alright; I can't vouch for the rest of the works. But from what I can see these authors were pretty wildly popular during their heyday, and my question is why so few of their works have been translated, and why it seems like so much translated manhwa is of low quality generally.

I did not know Bichunmoo was written by a woman. Anyway, I'd totally be interested in reading classic manhwas. Hope there are scanlators out there to take an interest.

Avatar by tassyn.livejournal.com

Reading: Kingdom, Sangokushi, Historie

I love manhwa's! I'm hoping to learn korean and japanese and help the scanlators. So far i know nothing but in the fall I'm going to school for language so eventually I'll be able to help....