Hi all! Happy to announce that a blog post on Korean queer animation through Flash and YouTube I wrote for In Media Res is now up. For those who know, it’s on “There She Is!!” and “Alien Stage” — very excited to have them both in conversation here.

Opening Paragraph:

In 2025, South Korea (hereon, “Korea”) ushered in a new liberal president, Lee Jae-myeong – but also appointed Ahn Chang-ho, known for his anti-LGBTQ stance, as the next chairman for the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. This is just one of the many paradoxes that complicate conversations on queerness in Korea, and by proxy, its expansive multinational media industry as well. In keeping with the theme, “Queer Animation,” I will thus look at two viral Korean web animation series – There She Is!! (2003-2008) and Alien Stage (2022-2025) – both of which prominently “sexual minorities” (songsosuja) and are equally invested in finding audiences outside of Korea. Together, they illustrate the push-and-pull of Korean queerness, which flits between hypervisibility versus invisibility, as mediated through the entangled web of Korean multimedia on the international stage.

Full post here:

https://mediacommons.org/imr/content/personal-political-korean-queer-animation-online-flash-youtube