Lim Dong Hee, or why I've really enjoyed Today's Webtoon
(Even though I've never read a webtoon in my life...)
I've been on a bit of a K-drama kick recently. I don't know if I've just become a bit of a soppy sod in my old age, but I really enjoyed Business Proposal having started to watch it on Netflix really just as a way to pass some time, and yet I ended up being absolutely hooked, and went on to blitz through I Wanna Hear Your Song before moving on to Today’s Webtoon. Kim Sejeong, a lead character in all three, has rapidly become one of my favourite actors and singers and, well, people, and I’m not going to talk any more about her in this at all, because even though she’s great, “great actor is great” isn’t really the point I want to make.
<b>May be spoilers for Today's Webtoon</b>
So, onto “Today’s Webtoon”, which is a Korean remake of a Japanese drama, which was in turn based on a manga. In the series, former Judo fighter and Olympic contender On Ma-eum, having been injured, decides to indulge another passion of hers, webtoons, by getting a job at Neon, a large webtoon company. The Korean series is available on Rakuten Viki in the UK, which is where I’ve been watching it. I’m up to about episode 10, so no spoilers please or I will be very cross with you! 😊
The character I wanted to talk about is Lim Dong-hee. He’s a nice bloke by all appearances, a loyal supporter of and assistant to his artist mentor Baek Eo-jin, as shown by his patience as the old mentor learns to use digital painting. He also supports troubled aspiring artist Shin Dae-Ryuk despite the latter’s difficult manner, awkward comments and challenging behaviours. When we first meet Lim, he regularly expresses the dream of finally debuting his own work.
As Shin begins to work with Lim, he regularly and openly criticises Lim Dong-hee self-deprecating comments, likening them to “cursing himself”. And yet Lim Dong-hee still supports, reviews the work of and encourages Shin Dae-ryuk.
We see Lim Dong-hee come into conflict with family members, and talk about how he has expended his youth trying to fulfil his dream. Still, with the continued support of people around him, he keeps working on his own toon, gets feedback on it, and submits it to a competition.
On receiving the news that his cartoon has failed to progress in the competition, and horrified at the innate superior storytelling capabilities of his junior, Shin Dae-ryuk, he takes to smashing up Dae-Ryuk’s laptop. But after some time to talk with his mentor and others, Lim Dong-hee decides to quite as an artist and move back home. As he leaves his mentor’s home, Shin Dae-ryuk remarks on how much he had enjoyed Lim Dong-hee’s work, and demonstrated that he actually understand what Lim Dong-hee was trying to say in his toon.
Later, as Shin Dae-Ryuk’s work is published and proves hugely successful, we see Lim Dong-hee rejoicing in the success of his former colleague. His journey even mirrors main character On Ma-eum’s own journey from abandoning her dreams of being an Olympic judoka to becoming a webtoon editor.
The point I’d like to make though is that Lim Dong-hee is not a main character, he’s not even the main character in a single episode. And yet he has a proper character arc, motivations, challenges, and a satisfying resolution. His journey reinforces the central idea of the series, that of reinventing yourself. And he might have maybe ten minutes of screen time in over 9 hours of episodes.
Lim-dong Hee could have been created purely as an antagonistic figure, or just window dressed for Baek Eo-jin, but instead he was a real, interesting and pivotal figure who we see some of the dark side of creativity from. When even the smaller characters have some thought put into them, the end result is so much better.
I know it’s quite trendy to bash on the dumpster fire that was The Acolyte from the Star Wars universe, but I can’t think of a single character’s motivation in the entirety of its run from that after eight hours, and yet I can talk at length about a character barely on the screen for a tiny fraction of that amount from a silly thing about webtoons. If a character is in your writing, they should matter, and they should have enough information for them to exist in your head, or why are they there?
