Silent no longer: Webtoon artist Jeon Ju-ok brings digital life to childhood memories of North Korea

North Korean refugees face unimaginable peril to reach freedom, but their tribulations hardly end with their escape. Cultural differences often limit opportunities to earn a living in South Korea. In this series, the Korea JoongAng Daily meets defectors who have found their niche, exploring how their experiences and backgrounds in the North have influenced their work. — Ed.

YONGIN, Gyeonggi — In North Korea, art exists strictly as a tool of state propaganda.

That is why, as a child growing up in a working-class family in remote Ryanggang Province, North Korea, Jeon Ju-ok learned to keep certain personal thoughts to herself, recording them instead in a private diary.

Now, 13 years after defecting to South Korea, the 30-year-old webtoon artist has turned those once-hidden entries into digital comics — published in Korean and English — that she shares online for free, using her personal experiences to bring North Korean issues to as many readers as possible.

In the North, even in her own diary, Jeon couldn’t write down things that disgrace the ruling Workers’ Party’s ideology, like, “I hate this country so much that I can’t stand to live here any longer” or “The general is such a bad leader and it’s making me suffer.” The general is an honorific term that North Koreans used for late leader Kim Jong-il, the father of current leader Kim Jong-un.

“Your body never really belongs to you. As the servant of the Workers’ Party, you’re merely the caretaker, not its owner,” Jeon said in an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily at her studio last week. “You learned not to express those sorts of thoughts because you never knew when your home would be searched.”

Jeon is the author of the comic book "Girl Jin," which tells the story of the life of a North Korean student who goes to a gifted school, a fictionalized version of herself. The book was showcased in Washington at the invitation of the National Endowment for Democracy in July 2024, introducing her work to human rights advocates and public figures interested in North Korean issues.

Related Article

The dream team

Jeon’s dream now takes the shape of a studio tucked away in a quiet, suburban neighborhood in Yongin, Gyeonggi, where she lives and works with her husband and toddler son.

Located in the semi-basement of a low-rise apartment building, her workspace is in a separate unit directly across from her home. It resembles that of many webtoon artists: A large dry-erase board on the wall covered in story ideas, featuring doodles drawn by her son and drawing tablets spread across two desks where Jeon and her husband work side by side.

Jeon is responsible for writing and storyboarding, while her husband handles the artwork and illustrations. Everything is created digitally. Even so, Jeon remains involved in nearly every stage of the webtoon production process, as her husband's lack of firsthand experience in North Korea can sometimes make it difficult for her to fully realize her creative vision.

“For example, if I want to depict a mother cooking in the kitchen, it looks nothing like it does here. In North Korea, many homes use traditional furnaces built into the kitchen for cooking and heating,” she said.

“Luckily, my husband is a bit of a genius,” Jeon added, with a laugh. “No matter how poor my explanation is, he’ll capture exactly whatever I had in mind. We’re a match made in heaven.”

Jeon’s newfound life as a webtoon artist began after she became pregnant with her son, when she began wondering about what she would do for a living. Her husband, already a webtoon artist, pitched an idea: What if the couple worked together?

“Around the same time, my husband had been wanting to have a higher purpose as a webtoon artist; something that goes beyond money and commercial competition, so this was the perfect opportunity for both of us,” Jeon said.

Until recently, she published webtoons in the Korea Hana Foundation’s monthly newsletter. The foundation, affiliated with the Ministry of Unification, is a public support institution for North Korean defectors, or North Korean-born citizens, as the ministry prefers to call them.

Jeon’s stories typically follow the everyday life of a North Korean girl, offering a personal glimpse into life in North Korea. In one episode, her character, named Jin, visits a jangmadang, as local markets are called in North Korea, where a vendor sells her toothpaste described as “from the lower neighborhood,” a colloquial nickname used by North Koreans to refer to South Korea.

In another episode, Jin talks about how the South Korean chocolate “Free Time” (translated) is prohibited in the North because its name uses the word “free.”

Not only did Jeon’s diary eventually become the foundation of her webtoons today, but, in retrospect, its pages also seemed to foreshadow her future: a teenager from a small North Korean village who would risk her life in pursuit of a new beginning in the South.

“I remember writing on the very first page that if I paired the talents my parents had given me with my own hard work, I could make my dreams come true,” she said.

Like night and day

As a girl growing up in a North Korean village near the border with China, Jeon was accustomed to frequently hearing gunshots at night. Neighbors immediately assumed it was soldiers killing people trying to defect.

“My dad would go with other villagers to bury their bodies,” Jeon said. “Everyone was used to it, but I thought I would go insane if I kept living there.”

Jeon and her older brother spent three years meticulously planning their escape. The day after Jeon's high school graduation in March 2013, they set off, traveling by boat and car through China for days under the guidance of a "broker," an intermediary that shepherds defectors to safety for money. Their journey eventually brought them to Thailand, where they were immediately taken into police custody, transferred to a refugee detention center and fined 2,500 baht ($80).

During the roughly seven weeks she spent there, the siblings decided to resettle in South Korea and underwent interviews with the National Intelligence Service — South Korea's intelligence agency — to verify that she was a North Korean defector rather than a spy.

“I had been thinking about leaving North Korea since elementary school,” Jeon said. “By the time I started high school, I was determined to do it, even though it meant that I would have to risk my life. I hated living in North Korea more than facing death itself.”

In North Korea, food shortages are also a constant reality. If smoke didn't rise from a neighbor’s chimney for at least a week, villagers would check to see if someone had died. Jeon recalled having to routinely turn away kotjebi, or homeless people in the North who beg for food and shelter, because helping one would quickly attract more once word got around.

“When I was 12 years old, an old lady asked us for food on a winter solstice day,” Jeon said. “We didn’t help. She died just four hours later. Turns out she came to our house when she was literally on the verge of starving.

“They say that there are 7 billion people in the world, and I just remember that I kept wondering, ‘Does everyone else live like this?’” she continued. “The funny thing is, North Koreans were always envious of the dead. Once you’re dead, you’re free from all suffering. Many thought that was better than continuing to live in North Korea.”

After watching a Chinese television drama series that was relatively accessible in the North, a teenage Jeon was shocked to see that they weren’t simply about praising their leader but dealt with themes of love or happiness.

“Then I secretly watched South Korean dramas, and it blew my mind,” she said. “They say that the difference between China and North Korea is like night and day, but South Korea was simply on another level. Everyone said that going to South Korea was the right thing to do.”

Scribbles in the North

Jeon doubts there are webtoons in North Korea, or anything remotely similar, due to the regime’s lack of an internet connection to the outside world. The closest equivalent she remembers was e-books available through the country’s intranet system, but even those remained tightly controlled by the state, like any other art genre.

Artists were especially prone to being labeled reactionaries. Because of this, they are forced to attend saenghwal chonghwa — struggle sessions where residents get together to reflect on their personal and professional lives and mutually critique each other — as often as once every two days.

“Anything that violates revolutionary ideology would be construed as ‘scribbles,’” Jeon explained. “I had heard of artists being punished quite often in the North due to such scribbles. It’s why ever since I was little, we were stringently taught to never scribble carelessly.”

One of the North’s best-known animated cartoons, “Squirrel and Hedgehog,” is widely considered political and military propaganda. It follows the story of the titular squirrels and hedgehogs who live on Flower Hill, a setting that symbolizes North Korea, as they join forces to fend off weasels, wolves and mice that constantly plot to invade their homeland. The latter three animals are interpreted to represent Japan, the United States and South Korea.

“All things aside, if there was anything better in North Korea than South Korea, I would have stayed there,” Jeon said. “Don’t get me wrong — I truly love my village, and I miss my family and neighbors. There’s a kind of happiness back home that can’t be found here. But have you ever been so hungry that you had to share a single bean?”

A diverging path

Life became smooth sailing for Jeon after she entered South Korea, where she enjoyed school life at Handong University in Pohang, North Gyeongsang, and majored in international relations and social welfare.

Back in North Korea, university was restricted to a select few, and in Jeon’s case, her older brother was the only person in her extended family to have gone to college.

“All my relatives pitched in financially to support my brother’s school expenses,” Jeon said. “Knowing how difficult it was to get into university, I never imagined that I’d attend myself.”

After becoming a webtoon artist, Jeon gained numerous opportunities to share her background. She produced a four-episode animation on North Korean human rights for the French over-the-top platform ARTE in 2024.

The same year, she participated in a side event as part of the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session in Geneva, Switzerland, where she displayed animated videos on issues of North Korean women's rights and child brainwashing.

The UN UPR is a UN Human Rights Council mechanism in which UN member states undergo a peer review of their human rights records every four and a half years.

It was at the UN event that she came face to face with the North Korean delegation — an encounter she described as a whirlwind experience.

“No matter how unjust any law may be, the fact that I defected is a severe crime in North Korea, so I always felt strange about it, even though I knew I had no fault,” Jeon said.

Stepping on a downward escalator at the venue, she crossed paths with the North Korean delegation who boarded the adjacent escalator heading up.

“It felt way too long, like 50 meters [164 feet],” Jeon said. “I could sense them glaring at me, and I was so uneasy. Then I reached into my pocket and grasped my passport. In that moment, it hit me all at once: I’m South Korean! I looked right back at them, but it wasn’t what I expected. They were looking at me with admiration and envy.”

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [shin.minhee@joongang.co.kr]