What Is Manhwa? Korean Comics Explained
Manhwa (만화) is the Korean word for comics. In English it usually means comics from South Korea. Printed manhwa reads left to right, like an English book, but today much of it is published online: full-color episodes, released a chapter at a time and read in one long vertical scroll on a phone.
What the word manhwa means
Manhwa means comics or cartoons, and it is written with the same two Chinese characters as the Chinese and Japanese words for comics, in their traditional or simplified forms.
The Standard Korean Language Dictionary gives 만화 the characters 漫畫 and defines it as pictures that tell a story in a series of scenes, with dialogue added. In Chinese the same word is read manhua (漫畫, simplified 漫画). The scholar Muyang Zhuang translates manhua as “cartoon” or “caricature” and says its original meaning was close to “casual paintings.” The painter Feng Zikai (豐子愷, 1898 to 1975) took the word from Japanese for his own drawings, in an older sense than today’s comic books.
Japanese writes the word 漫画 as well. Britannica links the word to the artist Hokusai, who used it in the 19th century for a set of woodblock-printed copybooks, and notes that in Japan the term covers all comics, wherever they come from. The three words are cognates. In English, each one usually names the comics of its own country, so “manhwa” means Korean comics.
A short history of manhwa
Manhwa moved from newspaper cartoons and comic books to rooms where readers paid to read them, then to the web and the phone.
An exhibition in Brussels described on Korea.net, the Korean government’s official website, traced more than 100 years of Korean comics, from the first cartoons printed in the press. From the 1960s the manhwabang (만화방, “comic room”) became the essential place to read them. A 2015 Korea JoongAng Daily profile recalls the private comic rooms that once dotted Seoul, where readers could rent manhwa to take home. Girls’ comics, called sunjeong manhwa (순정만화), were popular with women in their teens and twenties from the late 1950s to the 1990s, according to an interview in The Korea Times.
Print took a hard blow in the late 1990s. Korea.net names the Asian financial crisis and the Juvenile Protection Act, which, it says, put an end to the publication of adult comics. Artists had begun posting comics on the web in the 1990s. From the 2000s, comics in Korea were also made and read digitally.
Phones changed the format. The Korea Herald reports that online comics gained a broader following after 2008, with the arrival of smart devices, and that the early comic portals developed vertical scrolling. Korea.net notes that a web page has, in theory, no length limit, so an episode reads like one long, unbroken scroll.
How manhwa reads today
On a phone, a manhwa episode is one tall strip of full-color panels that you scroll down with your thumb.
Writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, DW McKinney describes digital, full-color comics optimized for a smartphone, with an infinite vertical panel or strip instead of separate pages. Stories come out as episodes. Korea.net describes series that update once or twice a week and have kept going for more than 300 episodes. Some begin as web novels and are drawn as comics later, as the Korea JoongAng Daily notes.
Manhwa vs manhua vs Japanese comics
The three share one word but come from different countries, and printed manhwa and Japanese comics read in opposite directions.
| Manhwa (Korea) | Manhua (China) | Japanese comics | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The word | 만화, written 漫畫 in Chinese characters | 漫畫 (simplified 漫画), first meaning roughly “casual paintings” | 漫画, used by Hokusai in the 19th century for woodblock-printed copybooks |
| Printed books read | Left to right | Varies by region and publisher | Right to left |
| Early home in print | Newspaper cartoons, then comic books read or rented in manhwabang | Mostly newspapers and pictorial magazines | Since the 1950s, anthology magazines, many weekly, running each series chapter by chapter before collecting it in paperback volumes |
Color is another visible difference. Britannica notes that Japanese comics are typically printed in black and white on inexpensive paper, which keeps costs down. Manhwa made for phones is usually in full color. Chinese-language comics have moved to phones too: in 2015 the Taipei Times reported web comics in Taiwan laid out in scrollable vertical strips for mobile readers, and in 2017 China Daily reported young readers in China following comics on phone apps.
Genres and terms readers meet
Many manhwa share genres with Korean web novels, and a few labels come up often.
- Romance fantasy. As the name says, romance mixed with fantasy. It is a named category of its own in Korean web fiction, which some comics are adapted from: a 2023 web novel contest reported by The Korea Herald judged romance, romance fantasy, fantasy and modern fantasy, historical fiction, and mystery suspense separately.
- Reincarnation. The Korea JoongAng Daily found three common kinds in 2021: a hero reborn as a younger version of themselves, reborn as a character inside a story, or reborn inside a video game. In almost every case the hero keeps the full memory of the first life and uses it.
- Martial arts. Along with fantasy and romance, one of the main genres of Korean web novels.
- Sunjeong manhwa. Girls’ comics, a print genre popular from the late 1950s to the 1990s.
- Episode. One installment of a series. Many series add a new episode once or twice a week.
Manhwa-style comics on Comicwell
Comicwell publishes original comics in English. Comicwell is not a Korean publisher, but two of its series are manhwa-style comics, told in vertical scroll and full color. They draw on Chinese legend, not Korean.
A Debt of Foxes is drawn from tales by Pu Songling, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. Lin Ming is the only living clerk in the Bureau of the Unrecorded, an office of the dead, and owes fourteen lines for striking her father’s name from the death roll by mistake. The Bureau assigns a surety: Nine, a fox with perfect manners, no line in any register and strong opinions about her handwriting. Every case she closes pays one line back. The first 20 comic chapters are free. The novel is A Debt of Foxes, Book One, and the first 10 novel chapters are free.
A Debt of Dragons is also drawn from tales by Pu Songling. Hong Mei rows the ferry at Willow Crossing and charges the drowned half fare. She pulls an arrow out of a golden carp; the fish is the Eighth Prince of the lake’s dragons, bound to her lamp until he saves her life. The Lake Court has plans of its own. The first 20 comic chapters are free. The novel is A Debt of Dragons, Book One, and the first 10 novel chapters are free.
Every Comicwell comic reads in one long vertical scroll. Browse the series by genre, see all novels, or read the legends behind these two: the nine-tailed fox and the Dragon King. More guides are in Legends.
Questions about manhwa
- How do you pronounce manhwa?
- Manhwa has two syllables, man and hwa, from the Korean 만화. In Korean the h is light, so the word can sound close to “man-wa.”
- Is manhwa read left to right?
- Printed manhwa reads left to right, like an English book. Manhwa made for phones is read from top to bottom, in one long vertical scroll.
- What’s the difference between manhwa and manhua?
- Manhwa are comics from Korea and manhua are Chinese-language comics. The two words are written with the same characters, 漫畫. Printed manhwa reads left to right, while the direction of printed manhua varies by region and publisher.
- Why is manhwa in color?
- Manhwa made for phones is usually in full color. A screen has no printing costs, so color does not make each copy more expensive the way it does on paper. Printed Japanese comics, by contrast, are typically black and white to keep costs down.
- What is a manhwabang?
- A manhwabang (만화방, “comic room”) is a shop where people paid to read or rent comic books. Korea’s official website says it became the essential place to read comics in the country from the 1960s.
Sources
- National Institute of Korean Language, Standard Korean Language Dictionary, entry 만화 (漫畫): stdict.korean.go.kr
- Muyang Zhuang, “A Literature Review on Manhua Studies,” Association for Chinese Animation Studies (2021): acas.world
- Britannica, article on Japanese comics and graphic novels (term, Hokusai, black-and-white printing, weekly magazines), consulted November 2026
- EBSCO Research Starters, “Manhwa (South Korean Comics)” (reading direction): ebsco.com
- Korea.net, Korean Comics exhibition at the Comics Art Museum, Brussels (exhibition to January 2021): korea.net
- Korea.net, Korean online comics feature, from KOREA magazine (March 2016): korea.net
- Josh Schenkkan, “Abandoned manhwa leads to U.S. exhibition,” Korea JoongAng Daily (March 15, 2015): koreajoongangdaily.com
- Park Ji-won, interview with Kim So-won on sunjeong manhwa, The Korea Times (July 24, 2021): koreatimes.co.kr
- Choi Ji-won, feature on Korean online comics going global, The Korea Herald (May 6, 2020): koreaherald.com
- DW McKinney, “Riding the Wave: The Steady Rise of Korean Manhwa,” Los Angeles Review of Books (October 24, 2020): lareviewofbooks.org
- Jung Ah-ram, “Short, addictive web novels hook more readers,” Korea JoongAng Daily (May 31, 2019): koreajoongangdaily.com
- Yoon So-yeon, column on reincarnation stories, Korea JoongAng Daily (March 22, 2021): koreajoongangdaily.com
- Lee Si-jin, “WWW 2023 looks for next big web novels,” The Korea Herald (July 12, 2023): koreaherald.com
- Kan Chih-chi and Chen Wei-han, “‘Web comics era’ is on display at Taipei show,” Taipei Times (February 10, 2015): taipeitimes.com
- Jiang Yijing, “Internet fuels Chinese comics industry,” China Daily (October 18, 2017): chinadaily.com.cn
- Background pointers: Wikipedia, “Manhwa” (pronunciation): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhwa; Wikipedia, “Manhua”: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhua