I recently found out that the manuscript fee for anew comic artist in Koreastarts at35000 won per leaf (which means two pages) for an artist in a boys' and men's magazine, and 25000 won per leaf for artists in a girls' and women's magazine.For artists who do notrun their works on magazines but do straight-to-bookcomics, the fee is 3.5 million won per book for artists doing comics for boys and men, and 2.5 million won (recently, 1.5 million won in some publishers)for artists doing comics for girls and women. (huge companies like Daewon actually pay lower than that price, the explanation being "Duh, you're gettingpublished," so it depends) To give you an idea of the cost of living, most starting salarymen/women in Seoul are paid about1.5 to 2 million won a month. Naturally, there has long been a struggle by soonjung artists (99% of whom are female), but they were only replied by excuses like "men have to support their families (like women don't-even unmarried people have to support their parents and siblings, and besides a lot of male comic artists aren't married as well)" "soonjung comics lack background and action scenes with lots of ruler lines and details, unlike comics for boys and men, which means they don't need a lot of assistants (what the...?)" Of course,it does mean that if I work for a boys' and men's magazine I'll get paid the same as the other male artists in the company,and also that a male soonjung artist will be paid the same aswith his female colleagues, but usually the gender divisionbetween genre and its artists being quite explicitly split, this is undeniably a gender issue. Since the environment is such that artists (both male and female)feel luckyenough to get paid regularly at all (working with a comic artist, I felt this well), this problem has long been left untouched until recently, whenveteran soonjung artists began to speak out.I would like to know, Matt; is it the same in Japan? Or did something similar happen before? (Since a majorityof the most original and memorable manhwa came from soonjung, I personally think this situation is diplorable.) Because the industry structure in Japan is somewhat similar to Korea, I would like to know about similar cases, if possible.

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Life can be a pain. But it ain't that bad, either.