Of all places, I stumbled across Korea's first ever comic book shop in Jukjeon 죽전, Suji-gu yesterday.
American Comics (아메리칸 코믹스) opened a month ago, offering archive issues and trade backs from DC/Marvel et al to rent in their original English form.
Enthused, I got speaking to the store's owner, Sean, a seemingly bitter man.
'This place is great!' (said before realizing I couldn't actually buy anything).
'Yeah that's what everyone says, but no-one ever joins'.
For to rent one has to join up for 30,000 a month. I put back the various Legends of the Dark Knight issues I'd picked out and awkwardly continued our conversation.
In Korea, borrowing manhwa from rental book & DVD stores is part of the norm. But these kind of shops don't require a membership fee - you just pay 1-2,000 or less per book to keep for a few days. 30,000 is a bit much, and you'd have to be a serious junkie to need to rent out a new comic every day to justify the asking price. Such a junkie would want to keep and collect their reading material anyway.
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