ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the framing of the cultural consumption of kurimchaek in contemporary North Korea from two perspectives. Firstly, it explores how cultural journals with articles about children and youth issues frame the social consumption of North Korean kurimchaek and manhwa, as well as South Korean manhwa. Secondly, it considers how North Korean graphic novels render the cultural consumer within their narratives, in which social situations and to what effects, and how these renderings correspond with the cultural consumers carved out in DPRK media discourse. Graphic novels employ their specific affordances both to address and to represent readers. The chapter examines how the official understandings of comics consumption are played out in cultural texts that are not specifically preoccupied with the definition and categorization of the kurimchaek media. It discusses the framing of South Korean manhwa in Ch'ollima, then North Korean kurimchaek and manhwa in Choson Yesul, and lastly North Korean kurimchaek in Ch'ollima.
