Cartoonists¡¯ historic epic due out soon

¡°How can a person write a love story without any experience of falling in love? I think imagination and emotion might be more important than experience.¡±

She is a 38-year-old maid. She insists on remaining single because she has not the slightest thought of getting married, although the social stigma surrounding spinsters still is negative in Korea.

She is comic writer Kim Hye-Rin. She earned fame after her work ¡°Pichonmu¡± was made a movie this year. She already was a star writer among the so-called ¡°386 generation¡± -- people in their 30s, who entered university in the 1980s and were born in the 1960s -- who loved her ¡°Star of North Sea,¡± which she wrote during her university days.

Her comic books feature, without exception, a heroine who makes her way through all the hardships at the risk of her life for her fateful love. Has she not yet met her fateful love?

¡°I think it is not that easy to become a person who sacrifices everything she has for love like the heroines of my comic books,¡± she says. ¡°I think that my readers might admit my comic books without special objection because they wish to experience such a love that can hardly be realized in reality.

¡°In fact, any love of any person has a fateful element. Because I amplify it in the comic, such a love is regarded to be more fateful.¡±

After a brief rest for ¡°recharging myself for better activities,¡± she is making herself busy these days. Her work ¡°Sword of Fire¡± about nomads of ancient times has been serialized after two years in the boy-meets-girl comic monthly magazine ¡°White¡± since November.

She already has mapped out how to end the ¡°Sword of Fire,¡± but she is in deep agony over how to plot those necessary episodes to lead to the conclusion.

In light of her 18-year career, the work is rather an ordinary one. She used to write sincere and heavy works based on history. As to why she writes historic works, she said: ¡°My works can be listed rather as historical dramas. They are popular. No matter how others analyze my works, my taste is to deal with historical backgrounds.¡±

Besides ¡°Sword of Fire,¡± she has an unfinished work, ¡°Kwangya (The Wilds),¡± which depicts modern Korean history since the days of Japanese colonial rule in the 1920s and the post-liberation times, and she gives it great affection.

¡°I will not finish ¡®Kwangya¡¯ in a short period,¡± she said. ¡°I will complete it with more than a decade with composure. It might be too much to compare it to Park Kyung-Ri¡¯ epic ¡®The Land.¡¯ I¡¯d like just to show a serious historic work that lives up to the characteristics of comics.¡±

suhchoi@donga.com