A couple of weeks ago at the San Diego Comic-Con, we sat down with a delegation from ICE Kunion, the new Korean consortium that was formed to bring Korean comics to the American  market (see 'Korean Consortium Leads Manhwa Charge').  Erik Ko, Chief of Operations at UDON, and Charles Park, Editorial Manager there, were the North American contingent; Jeong-hyun Chn, Publication Dept./Director of Sigongsa, and Ju-youn Lee, Studio ICE editor from Sigongsa were the Korean representatives.  In Part 3, we discuss the path of Korean intellectual property development and the relationship between UDON and the Korean publishers.  In Part 1, we talked about the decision to enter the U.S. market directly, rather than continue to work through licenses.  And in Part 2, we discussed the pace of the launch, the target audience, and the nature of the Korean comics market. 

The Japanese paradigm for intellectual property development in this field starts with anthologies, then tankoubons, then anime, then toys.  What about the latter two steps in Korea.?  Is intellectual property development there similar to manga?  Are the manga developed into animation and toys?

Ko:  Most of the manhwas are still in the manhwa stage.  But in the past few years the Korean animation industry has been really growing.  Merchandising hasn't kept up, mostly because of import costs and a lot of things adding up.  That's probably the next thing, the merchandising of local property.  Animation and video games are in the works.  More Korean animation is coming out.  More studios are setting up.  Video game studios are setting up.

Ko:   You know all these programs are highly supported and sponsored by the Korean government.  They are very supportive of this creative business to a world-wide wowing level.

Park:  A lot of the property becomes a TV drama instead of animation.  They go directly to live action because a lot of our properties deal with the shoujo line, which is more fitting for TV dramas and movies rather than action-packed animation type.  Video games have been incredibly big in Korea.  The adaptation to the video games has been large.  Most AmKoans don't know much about Korean video games.  Korean video game companies are among the largest in the world.  They're all based on Korean manga. 

What is the relationship between Udon and the Korean group?

Ko:  We met up with Eddie Yu who is the mastermind behind this whole project.  Eddie has been our friend for awhile.  We talked about how we could get it done.  With Udon, I have been working in the comic book industry for five years.  Before that I was in licensing.  I've been working in marketing and licensing for the last eight years.  I've been consulting with Eddie, so that when this project actually materialized we became marketing partners in the U.S. because they are so far away in Korea.  They need somebody who knows the market here.  Being more of a communication and coordination hand, I help them make sure the launch goes well.  I talk to you guys on a constant basis and stuff like that.

Is there editorial involvement?

Ko:  Charles here works at Udon, and he is going to be the editorial manager. 

Park:  We are actually involved with production as well.  Marketing and production for the time being because we just started and we want to mature and expand the market.  At the same time we have to study the market.  Currently most of the work is handled in Korea.

Ko:  The production side of things.  But the editorial...Charles is Korean himself.  He's been living in the States for years.  He is the bridge between the two cultures.  He knows what's going on in the manga market because he reads a lot of manga.  We do a lot of research to give advice to the Korean head office as to what they need to do.  In the meantime there will be some stuff we need to adapt.  There are things that are totally Korean that fans here might not understand.  We might have to give more explanation.  That's the editorial advice that we will give them. 

Playing devil's advocate, you said one of the reasons the Korean companies wanted to come here directly was to remove the intermediary.  But it sounds like there's still an intermediary, perhaps one that's under tighter control...

Park:  We are actually controlled by them.  Udon is a marketing consultant.

You're doing editorial too, right?

Park:  No.  More like advice.  Actual productions are done by them.  There will be a branch in the United States in the future.  For the time being we are slowly investing, slowly investigating, and slowly learning.  Once we have enough material and confidence, there will be more in-depth joint productions.

Ko:  We're not controlling editorial here.   Just to throw something out, like kim-chi, a term that a lot of people know what it is, but some people still don't know what it is.  We might have to adapt a little bit, but not really change it.  Just add little things on the side, side-notes or something.  These are the things we will advise them.  We need to give further explanation to this term.  A lot of people may not know what kim-chi is, so we'll just put sauerkraut.  We will keep the word there so that people will see, but these are the editorial notes Park will give them.  We're not changing the terminology.  We're adding to it so that it's more favorable to North American readers in terms of how they're going to learn our culture.

Anything else you want to communicate to our retailer audience?