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| Poster for the 24th Bucheon International Comics Festival / Courtesy of Bucheon International Comics Festival |
By Park Ji-won
The 24th Bucheon International Comics Festival (BICOF) will be held in both online and offline platforms from Sept. 4 to 12 where a variety of free events promoting Korean web comics are planned amid the expansion of the web comics industry here.
Themed "New normal, new connection," the festival, hosted by the Korea Manhwa Contents Agency, will hold various events, such as fan meeting events, the Gyeonggi International Cosplay Festival (GICOF), international seminars on various issues such as minority issues and the comic category "boy's love" (BL). Exhibitions will be held mainly on YouTube and at the Korea Manhwa Museum located in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province.
The opening ceremony will be presented in a virtual space by using digital technologies such as hologram, VR and AR. During the ceremony, the winner of the Bucheon Manhwa Award will be announced among "Yumi's Cells" by Lee Dong-gun, "Navillera" by HUN, "My End-of-pregnancy Story" (Korean title) by Aude Mermilliod and "Civilian Control Zone" by OSIK.
The opening ceremony will be translated into English simultaenously, while some of the key videos such as fan meetings and exhibitions will have English subtitles later on, the organizer said.
Kim Hyoung-bye, chairman of the festival's steering committee said "We aimed to show the joy of enjoying the dynamics of this content when we don't have much chance to meet offline. We hope audiences gain energy and comfort through the online-based festival."
Yoo Soo-hun, director of the festival said during a press conference held to promote the festival that "Last year, we had some technical difficulties in holding online venues. So we tried to fix the errors so that audiences can communicate well with each other. For example, there are discussion sessions between Korean and French authors and with the Belgium comics festival."
Lee Yong-cheol, head of the Culture Promotion Office of the festival, added that it aimed to introduce more web comics which didn't have enough chance to be promoted amid the fast expansion of the industry.
One of the highlights of the show would be fan meetings with authors. Comics writers of eight works such as Lee Dong-gun of "Yumi's Cells," HUN and Jimin of "Navillera," Shin Il-sook of "Four Daughters of Armian" and OSIK of "Civilian Control Zone" will have fan meetings via ZOOM. About 10 fans would be able to have an online meeting with the authors, respectively.
Also, a live concert of the OST from the megahit JTBC series "Itaewon Class" will be live streamed on Sept. 11.
On the sidelines of the festival, the GICOF will hold "Cosplay@home," a costume play video festival, providing videos of costume players from 10 different countries while selecting winners among the Korean applicants who submitted costume play videos.
