The Color Trilogy

AUTHOR: Kim Dong Hwa

ARTIST: Kim Dong Hwa (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Daewon Culture Industry (Korean); First Second Books (English)

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION:The Story of Life on the Golden Fields, 1992-1995 (English translation, 2009)

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1995-1996 (English translation, 2009)

Publication History

While observing his ill, aged mother sleeping, South Korean manhwa, or comics, writer and artist Kim Dong Hwa realized that his mother had once been a young, attractive girl. Kim began to imagine what his mother’s early years must have been like and later investigated her childhood more formally. These efforts resulted in the creation of The Color of Earth, The Color of Water, and The Color of Heaven, or the Color trilogy, as it is sometimes known, which is loosely based on some of his mother’s childhood experiences.

The Color trilogy, originally titled The Story of Life on the Golden Fields, was first serialized in the manhwa magazine Twenty Seven beginning in 1992. The series concluded three years later. Between August, 1995, and April, 1996, Daewon Culture Industry published the work in five volumes. Kim noted that he had wanted to publish the work as a trilogy, but regulations at that time limited manhwa to no more than 180 pages. Eventually this standard was lifted, and in 2003 a three-volume set of the work was published in South Korea.

The trilogy was translated into French and published by Franco-Belgian publisher Casterman as Histoire couleur terre in 2006 and 2007. In November, 2007, Casterman released a boxed set containing all three volumes. In 2008, Planeta DeAgostini published a three-volume Spanish edition titled Historias color tierra: Los pequeños cuentos di mi madre. In 2009, First Second Books published the trilogy in English with each volume titled individually: The Color of Earth, The Color of Water, and The Color of Heaven.

Plot

Kim’s trilogy, set in rural pre-Korean War (1950-1953) Korea,presents a linearcoming-of-age narrative that follows Ehwa from age seven to seventeen. The only daughter of a young widow who runs the village tavern, Ehwa is bright and energetic, but she has remained innocent and naïve. As the narrative progresses, she learns about the physical differences between the sexes. She also experiences her first crush, along with the confusion it brings; unrequited love; recognition of her emotional and sexual longings; a painful separation from her love; marriage; and, finally, her first sexual experience.

Much of what Ehwa learns about sex originates from her interactions with Bongsoon, her more worldly and adventurous friend. Bongsoon teaches Ehwa about the sex act, genitalia, and masturbation. Much of what Ehwa learns about romance originates from conversations with her mother, who uses euphemistic flower, insect, and bird metaphors to describe women’s hearts and their relationships with men.

As Ehwa matures, she experiences three loves. At nine, she encounters Chung-Myung, a boy monk, on a narrow footbridge. Though they have few additional encounters, the two maintain an infatuation with each other for several years. Chung-Myung considers renouncing his Buddhist vows for Ehwa, but the physical and spiritual distances between them are too great to overcome.

At fifteen, Ehwa, following Bongsoon’s advice, tosses a dried flower into the reflecting pool, hoping to see the face of her true love appear. As Ehwa stares at the water, the face of Sunoo, the orchard farmer’s son, materializes. Turning around, Ehwa sees Sunoo and becomes infatuated with him. Although Sunoo is kind to Ehwa, he does not return her affections. Ehwa is confused and brokenhearted when he returns to school, leaving her behind.

Finally, Ehwa falls in love with Duksam, a farmhand from a neighboring village. As the relationship between the two intensifies, Duksam’s elderly employer, Master Cho, meets Ehwa and is aroused by her beauty. He sends Duksam on an extended trip and attempts to convince Ehwa’s mother to sell Ehwa to him. Ehwa’s mother sees through the ruse and refuses the offer. Upon returning and learning of his master’s deceit, Duksam destroys some of Master Cho’s property, but then he must flee for his life. He promises Ehwa that he will return for her and joins a fishing vessel in a distant coastal city. Ehwa dutifully waits for Duksam’s return. Upon his homecoming, the two marry and experience their first conjugal union.

A secondary narrative presents Ehwa’s mother’s romance with a traveling pictograph painter. The first evening he comes through the village, he asks Ehwa’s mother for a place to sleep for the night. He leaves a paint brush behind, promising to return for it. Ehwa’s mother tacks the brush to the wall and spends much of her leisure time pining for him to return. As his visits increase, she eventually displays seven brushes on the wall. The narrative ends after Ehwa’s wedding night, with Ehwa’s mother sitting outside her home. She tells the picture man that it is a woman’s fate to wait, but that she had never thought she would be waiting for her daughter.

Volumes

•The Color of Earth (2009). Follows Ehwa from seven to fifteen and presents her first two relationships, with Chung-Myung and Sunoo.

•The Color of Water (2009). Follows Ehwa from fifteen to sixteen and presents her relationship with Duksam and his flight from the village.

•The Color of Heaven (2009). Follows Ehwa from sixteen to seventeen and presents Duksam’s return and their subsequent marriage.

Characters

•Ehwa, the protagonist, is a young, beautiful girl who is energetic, bright, and curious, though rather sheltered. She is presented between the ages of seven and seventeen and slowly comes of age; the story culminates in her marriage and first sexual experience.

•Ehwa’s mother, a secondary protagonist, is a beautiful young widow who believes in highly romantic notions of love. She artfully fends off the sexual advances of some of her male customers. She also teaches Ehwa about women’s hearts, speaking euphemistically. She develops a passionate relationship with a traveling pictograph artist.

•The Picture Man is a traveling pictograph artist who sells small paintings and calligraphy. After spending the night at Ehwa’s mother’s house, he intermittently returns unannounced but leaves a paint brush behind after each visit. He develops an intimate relationship with Ehwa’s mother.

•Dongchul is a childhood friend of Ehwa. He is sexually preoccupied, asking to see under Ehwa’s skirt, often fondling his penis inside his pants while in public, and talking incessantly about sexual matters. He and Bongsoon develop a relationship and appear to experiment sexually with each other.

•Bongsoon is a childhood friend of Ehwa and her chief instructor in sexual matters. She convinces Ehwa to “play wedding” and wrestles Ehwa to the ground to demonstrate how a man and a woman “become one.” She later convinces Ehwa to “play adults,” telling Ehwa to lie down and imagine a man she likes as Bongsoon fondles her. Ehwa protests, after which Bongsoon teaches her how to masturbate.

•Chung-Myung is Ehwa’s first love. He is an eight-year-old monk when he first meets her. Over the following seven years, he is conflicted by his deep longing for Ehwa and his Buddhist vows of celibacy.

•Sunoo is Ehwa’s second, though unrequited, love. He is a slight, handsome boy and the son of a relatively wealthy orchard farmer. Ehwa first meets him after seeing his reflection in the reflecting pool. He is kind to Ehwa but does not return her feelings. Upon his recuperation from an injury, he returns to school, leaving Ehwa brokenhearted.

•Duksam is a large, ruggedly built farmhand from another village who eventually falls in love with Ehwa. He desires to have the financial means to care for Ehwa before marrying her. He flees his village after destroying his master’s property because his master had attempted to claim Ehwa for himself. Duksam tells Ehwa he will work on fishing vessels, save sufficient money, and return to marry her. He finds the separation too painful and returns earlier than expected to marry Ehwa.

•Master Cho is the master of the house where Duksam works and lives. He is old and decrepit, but upon seeing Ehwa, he becomes aroused and grows obsessed with possessing her. He sends Duksam out of town and makes multiple futile attempts at securing Ehwa for himself. He tries to kill Duksam after Duksam destroys some of his property.

Artistic Style

The Color trilogy is printed in black and white, although some international editions include a few pages of color. Kim’s drawings of landscapes, structures, and clothing are highly detailed, while facial features are quite simple. The characters are fairly typical of manhwa, as they are drawn with realistic features, clothing, and hair.

The covers of each volume illustrate Ehwa’s maturation. The cover of The Color of Earth depicts Ehwa as a seven-year-old, awkwardly holding her right elbow while looking over her right shoulder. The Color of Water presents Ehwa sitting with a bouquet of flowers in her left hand as she looks coquettishly to her left. The Color of Heaven displays a confident Ehwa holding a red flower in her right hand and wearing traditional wedding garb.

Kim uses distinct gutters to separate panels while varying the number of panels per page. Most pages contain three to five panels, but a few contain six or seven. Kim also includes single-panel pages as well as two-page panels. A few full-page panels bleed off the page.

Kim’s art contains a great many visual symbols. Most notable are the recurring images of butterflies, a traditional Korean symbol of happiness and love freely chosen. Kim’s narrative associates butterflies with potential suitors as well as personality types. Other notable symbols in the trilogy are shoes, indicating the status of a relationship; brushes on the wall, suggesting the promise of a return; rain, signifying life transitions; and more than thirty varieties of flowers, representing the multiplicity of human characteristics, emotions, and relationships. Adding to the authenticity of the setting, Kim presents lush images common in rural prewar Korea. He draws the female characters in traditional dress (hanbok) and includes images of small structures used by farmers for shaded rest breaks (wondoomak), small village temples containing guardian deities (seonghwangdang), small oil lamps (horongbool), wooden drums struck by Buddhist priests (moktak), and large jars used to store soy sauce, soybean paste, and red-pepper paste (jangdok).

Kim’s drawings of Ehwa and Duksam consummating their marriage are rather minimalist, as genitalia are obscured and Ehwa is drawn without nipples. The scene is, however, juxtaposed with many symbolic images: a droplet forming a ripple, which transforms into a ring of flowers hovering over their bed; flowers streaming down around the lovers; two hearts slowly converging; paper lanterns swaying; a wave transforming into two cloudlike bodies intertwined; rain pouring; the sun blazing; Duksam running among sand dunes and splashing in a puddle; gongs striking loudly; a pestle vigorously grinding inside a mortar; dandelion seeds floating toward the sky, transforming into kites; a tall waterfall crashing; and, finally, two butterflies frolicking in flight.

Themes

One pervasive theme throughout Kim’s trilogy is the highly romanticized view that freely chosen love supersedes all other concerns for women. Ehwa’s mother ruminates on love and romance throughout the work, reinforcing the view of women as primarily passive parties in love. Ehwa’s mother sits nightly on her front stoop, facing the village entrance and waiting for the picture man to return. She views women as lovesick creatures who must faithfully wait for their men to return. Ehwa and her mother appear to think of little else but romance, which is repeatedly expressed in their euphemistic discussions about the characteristics of flowers.

Though presenting highly patriarchal notions of women’s inner lives, Kim’s work does offer pointed criticism of the suffering women endure in arranged marriages, noting that new wives experience years of agonizing subservience to their in-laws. Ehwa’s mother’s privileging of freely chosen love would have run counter to the culture of her day, and she rebuffs two offers for Ehwa, allowing Ehwa to experience the happiness of love freely chosen.

The importance of feminine beauty in capturing the heart of a man is another prevalent theme. Ehwa’s mother often gives Ehwa beauty tips. Bongsoon and Ehwa discuss the marks of feminine beauty by making lists of threes, determining that to be considered beautiful, women must have clear skin, straight teeth, and delicate hands; black eyes, eyebrows, and eyelashes; red lips, cheeks, and nails; soft bodies, hair, and hands; short teeth, ears, and legs; thin lips, waists, and ankles; voluptuous arms, bottoms, and thighs; and small nipples, noses, and heads.

Impact

Although Kim’s work has been lauded by some as an example of manhwa that deals with mature content, many critics and readers have objected to its uncritical handling and seeming endorsement of traditional patriarchal views of gender roles. Ehwa and her mother seem to accept traditional gender roles and stereotypes. The importance of feminine beauty, women’s obsession with romance and state of perpetual lovesickness, the undesirability of daughters, women’s tolerance of men’s sexual harassment, women’s fate to endure, double standards for men and women, narrowly defined boundaries for women, the necessity of cooking well to make husbands happy, the misery of unmarried women, and women’s contentment with simple pleasures are all presented with little to no disapproval in the trilogy.

Some critics of the work have also called attention to the negative portrayal of Bongsoon’s licentiousness as compared to Ehwa’s chasteness, noting that Bongsoon’s features are piglike; however, Ehwa repeatedly notes that she wishes she could be as bold as Bongsoon even though she is often scandalized by Bongsoon’s behavior. In some ways, the narrative challenges traditional views of women’s roles. Ehwa’s mother is a young widow who owns and operates the village tavern, which would have been considered a fairly disreputable occupation for a woman of that era. In addition, while Ehwa adheres to societal expectations of chastity, her mother, in her relationship with the picture man, does not. However, she maintains sufficient income to support Ehwa, cleverly fends off the sexual advances of her male customers, and does not compromise her personal values for gain.

Further Reading

Hagio, Moto. A Drunken Dream and Other Stories (2010).

Kouno, Fumiyo. Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms (2009).

Bibliography

Kim, Dong Hwa. “The Colors of Kim Dong Hwa: The ‘Color’ Trilogy.” Interview by Michael C. Lorah. Newsarama, April 16, 2009. http://www.newsarama.com/comics/040916-Colors-First-SecondA.html.

Korea Culture and Content Agency. Manhwa: Another Discovery in Asian Comics. Seoul: Communication Books, 2007.

‗‗‗‗‗‗. Manhwa 100: A New Era for Korean Comics. Seoul: C&C Revolution, 2008.