Japan's comic craze was first documented for the West with the publication of Frederick Schodt's "Manga Manga, The World of Japanese Comics" (1983). Since then, the production and consumption of manga and anime -- its moving picture equivalent -- have spread to China and the Republic of Korea. More recently, on the production side, North Korea has emerged as a destination for "outsourcing" the heavy manual labor element of both manga and anime, as illustrated by French-Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle's introspective graphic novel "Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea" (2005). Almost nothing, however, has been written on the indigenous manga industry in North Korea.

South Korea has manhwa-chaek; in North Korea, comics are known as gruim-chaek or "picture books." As in Japan, they are targeted at the younger generations. The themes reflect North Korean politics and contemporary history: anti-U.S., anti-Japanese and anti-capitalist. They resemble the unauthorized versions of "Tintin" comics in China, which in the 1970s and '80s transformed the bourgeois boy detective into an agent of class struggle.

According to North Korean President Kim Il Sung's "Theses on Socialist Education" (1977), socialist education is "a weapon for ideological and cultural training" and its continuation outside of formal schooling is essential through social activities to revolutionize and intellectualize society within a class-conscious environment.