Goggas brings Korean comic books and more to English readers

A frame from "NPC Begins" by Hwang Biori / Courtesy of Goggas, copyright Hwang Biori

By Jon Dunbar

A new bilingual publisher in Korea hopes to share interesting stories with readers in both English and Korean. Goggas, located in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province, released for the first time in English, translations of two Korean comic books last month.

The two titles, "The Weight of a Picture/NPC Begins" by Hwang Biori and "House of Delusion" by Goo Hyun-seong, both take an experimental approach to the comic book medium, pushing it in unusual directions.

In "The Weight of a Picture," a young woman finds her life untethered after her cat passes away, so she decides to leave home. Meanwhile, starting from the back cover, "NPC Begins" tells the simultaneous story of a video game addict who maybe puts on a mask to go outside, or maybe keeps playing the game, with the story advancing from right to left, sort of like a Japanese manga book. The two stories collide at the middle page of the book, in an unconventional use of the structure of a published book. What that literary collision means is up to the reader, whether this is two souls coming together or just a passing encounter between two strangers.

The 44-page "House of Delusion" tells a radically different story, while also making use of the symmetrical structure of a book, from cover to spine. The narrative seems centered around a guy in a house whose hallucinations intensify, from seeing odd creatures and textures all the way to the complete breakdown of reality into some kind of singularity found on the middle pages of the book. Then the palindromic narrative begins its way back to some semblance of the familiar, like coming slowly out of a really bad acid trip. The nightmarish corruption and dissolution of reality is not pleasant, but a real artistic accomplishment nonetheless.

A frame from "House of Delusion" by Goo Hyun-seong / Courtesy of Goggas, Copyright Goo Hyun-seong

These two books will certainly never get their own multi-billion-dollar Cinematic Universe, but they present two mature, unconventional stories that are worth the read, even if they can be unnerving and lead to far more questions than answers.

"I hope to introduce stories of people who have knowledge about Korean history and culture with affection for the country, as well as Koreans who have interesting experiences abroad," said Park So-yeon, writer, editor and publisher of Goggas.

The publishing company gets its name from goggas (pronounced "ho-has"), an Afrikaans word for "insect," which seems appropriate on the surface after reading "House of Delusion" which is filled with insectoid hallucinations.

But Park said she came up with the name four years ago while reading a book about insects, and how they became Earth's longest-existing form of life through evolution.

"I thought these insects were like most writers and artists," she said. "Most writers and artists want to continue their works whether they get famous or not. Their situation felt like a life facing extinction. Insect evolution was about 'try everything until something works.' So, I thought I would use the strategy someday."

The covers of "NPC Begins/The Weight of a Picture" by Hwang Biori and "House of Delusion" by Goo Hyun-seong / Courtesy of Goggas

The two comic books are available online through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookstore.org and Book Depository, and in Korea through Kyobo Book Centre stores, Coupang, Yes24 and Aladin. Books are also available directly through the Goggas website's online store.

Park also has plans to publish non-fiction under the label "Gaek" (The Guest), with some big projects set for release as early as later this year.

This includes a Korean version of "A Korean Odyssey: Island Hopping in Choppy Waters" by Michael Gibb, a former Seoul-based journalist, released in English last year on Camphor Press.

Goggas is also planning to publish "Called by Another Name," a memoir by David Dolinger, an American who was present during the May 1980 Gwangju Uprising and expelled from the Peace Corps right after amid allegations he violated a political neutrality rule. The book will give a rare first-hand account of the inner workings of the pro-democracy uprising's organizers the night before the military killed them, as well as a vivid description of the aftermath of the massacre. There will be a crowdfunding campaign for the book later this year.

"In my 20s, the more I experienced in life and saw the world, the more I wondered about the purpose of arts, films, and pop-culture in general," Park said. "It felt so useless. There are so much more serious issues to deal with in reality, and what I did ― making films and writing stories ― was not solving any problems. As time went by, I got into stories based on true events. Naturally, memoir became my favorite genre. I think this was the process of finding what kind of story I like more than others. So I would like to reach people who enjoy intense stories and art ― like I do ― through the books I publish."