Yeong-Shin Ma

Yeong-shin Ma was born in Seoul in 1982.

When he was young, there was a military apartment for American soldiers in his neighborhood, so he grew up seeing the children of these soldiers on a daily basis. They were the terror of the whole neighborhood, often shutting off the power of the arcade game the Korean kids happened to be playing. At times, a dozen of them would storm Ma’s block with M16 BB guns strong enough to shatter windows, while the Korean kids had only planks of wood for weapons. The Korean kids were small, so they were always busy running away, hiding out at the homes of older boys, who sometimes treated the younger ones to American porno films. When the older boys became adolescents and grew bigger, the leader of the American gang handed over a large bag of Cheetos as a peace offering. That’s how the war of several years finally ended.

When Ma entered middle school, he discovered that his school was ranked the lowest performing in the entire country, and encountered all kinds of garbage teachers and students. At twenty-five years old, after completing his military service, he started drawing comics as part of an indie group. It was only in his mid-thirties when he looked back on his journey as a comic artist that he realized his childhood experiences have become the foundation of his work.

From 2015, he has been publishing webtoons. Though comics publishing has moved from print to digital, he still works with pen and paper. Recently after losing a lot of money in bitcoin, he started producing. He is currently working on a series with several other artists. He also sells his original illustrations through his website, and when he manages to make a bit of profit, he invests his earnings right back in music and comics that don’t make money.