Webcomics featuring engineering students gain popularity

A web comic illustrating everyday life of engineering students has become popular these days. The secret is a twist of agonizing college life of engineering students as a famous American sitcom the Big Bang Theory. Exams for an entire year like the saying that cherry blossom stands for the mid-term, staying up all night for experiments, assignments, endless life in the lab during the master's and doctor's course.

The web comic "Engineering Students Comic Enough" by web cartoonist Choi Bbip W (pen name) since May depicts a story of Kang Ji-woo, an ordinary student with poor high school records and average score in the college scholastic ability test. He enters a prestigious "Choigon University majoring in Social and Ecological Design (Dept. of Engineering) and gets used to the life of engineering student. Writing papers, exhausted teaching assistants, never ending tests, check shirts in collaboration of the X/Y axis (an official dress code of engineering students), and getting crazy with female students who are rarely seen in the department... The daily life of engineering students is enough to bring laughter regardless of major. The author also posts a web comic titled "Surviving in the College of Engineering" on the company blog of SK Hynix.

Of course, web comics featuring engineering students are full of humor. But there are some more. The story also reflects the funny and sad reality in every way such as getting a job, which is harder than studying the major, and a social mood that does not acknowledge the efforts of engineers.

PermIT!, which is released in series on the web comics platform COMICO and written by Jeon Hye-jin and Lee Soo-hyeong, presents us something to think about along with social phenomena listed above. Main character Jin-soo is Podak (a parody of postdoctoral) at the cartoon PermIT!, which is the name of fried chicken shop ran by Jin-soo's father who studied engineering at college. Readers cannot laugh all the time when they read lines like, "Ask the owner of a fried chicken shop if someone working on a project in the Pangyo Venture Valley faces an obstacle," or "You will never make money enough to open a fried chicken shop if you study liberal arts at college."

"Engineering Students' Toon" by Kim Eun-ik, which was released in series since January, portrays a candid story of the a female freshman whose major is electronic engineering and is now on the top list of "best challenge cartoon" board of portal site Naver with a review score of 9.9. Readers post supporting comments such as “Although I am majoring in liberal arts, I am well aware of hardships of engineering students” and share their feelings. There are even some cases that engineering students are solving the questions presented on the web comic together.

이서현기자 baltika7@donga.com