The Summer I Met Yakkuk (a.k.a. Bad Pharmacy)
Sometimes you meet people with the same interests as you, and a beautiful friendship blossoms. Other times, you stumble across an artist whose tastes and sensibilities align with yours so perfectly that you start wondering if youâre soulmates. Have you ever read a more parasocial sentence? Well, now you have.
Last month, I had the greatest pleasure of attending my favorite BL comic artistâs book signing event at Animate Taipei. It was a decision that was both impulsive and carefully considered. I asked my closest friends whether I should go, weighed the costs against the experience, and eventually realized Iâd probably regret missing the opportunity far more than I would regret spending the money. Iâm just a regular office lady earning a little above minimum wage, so traveling isn't something I can do on a whim. Every trip abroad requires months of saving and careful planning, which is why I always try to make each one count. With my birthday falling in early June, I figured there couldn't be a better excuse to treat myself to a short and sweet trip, one that ended up being every bit as memorable as Iâd hoped.
People close to me (or those who have lurked around my account long enough) already know how big a fan I am of Yakkuk, also known as Bad Pharmacy to the global audience. Depending on where you encountered her, Yakkuk may be familiar through Unlucky Mansion, her most widely recognized work among shoujo readers; The Eve Festival, among BL readers; or her NCT: Dream Contact Webtoon project for those coming from K-pop fan spaces. Regardless of entry point, I guarantee that anyone who takes the time to explore her body of work in its entirety will discover an artist of unusual consistency and depth.
Yakkuk is a remarkably strong storyteller, arguably one of the strongest among her contemporaries in the current Korean BL comic scene. With a background in visual design and more than a decade working in the manhwa industry, she has very little left to prove to a global audience. Yet, as an English-speaking reader, one of my unchanging frustrations is how inaccessible her work remains, both in print and through official digital releases. The industry generally favors titles that have already built a substantial international audience through major English webtoon platforms, making an English print edition of Yakkukâs work an unlikely prospect. At present, only one of her series, Curveball and Splitter, has been officially licensed in English. Even then, it seems to have fallen into the pits of hell that are Mantaâs vertical splicing practices and possible AI translation that many readers, myself included, find unsatisfying.
What makes this particularly frustrating is that Yakkuk places immense value on her analog approach to comics. She remains committed to black-and-white and traditional page-format storytelling, resisting the industryâs increasing preference for the full-color vertical format. Her work serves as a compelling reminder that page-format comics are not merely legacy forms but living, enduring artistic structures capable of producing reading experiences that digitally optimized formats cannot easily replicate. Itâs a shame then, that the only Korean BL to get licensed in English are those that still need to be reoptimized into page format. Yakkukâs BL oeuvre is already formatted for print publication! The only things missing are a talented translator, an editor with strong curatorial instincts, and a publisher to distribute it. More than anything, I hope that any future English licensing of her work respects the format in which it was intended to be read and engaged with.Â
Admittedly, Yakkukâs sensibilities fall somewhat outside the range of most palatable commercial BL stories being told today. I would argue that she has a knack for balancing the sensibilities of older BL manga (particularly works published before the late 2010s) with the accessibility and familiarity expected of contemporary ones. Her stories often feature familiar tropes and recognizable settings, making them approachable to newer readers, while retaining the emotional complexity and risky narratives that longtime BL readers may find increasingly rare. I suspect part of this comes from the fact that Yakkuk is, first and foremost, a longtime manga fan herself. As a reader, fujoshi, and (occasionally?) a slash fan, she belongs to a lineage of creators whose artistic practice emerges from sustained engagement with the medium. This is hardly unique to Yakkuk! Fan spaces have long functioned as informal training grounds for artists and writers, producing creators whose technical abilities are matched by an intimate understanding of genre conventions. People have said this many times before, but most compelling works often come from those who have first spent years as attentive readers. They commit a certain amount of time in analyzing what moves them, what doesnât and why, and when they eventually create their own work, that accumulated love and understanding becomes part of the foundation.Â
Moved by my love for her and her work, I wrote her a letter in the early months of 2026. I recognize that fan mail â or what I believe Japanese readers more commonly call âfeedback mailâ â is a much more established practice among BL manga readers. Since Japanese BL continues to operate largely in print while Korean BL is distributed primarily through digital platforms (with paperback editions arriving later, if at all), it makes sense that Korean BL fans are generally more active in interacting with their favorite creators online. But like Yakkuk, I place a lot of value on analog practices. Perhaps it was this sentimentality, mixed with a bit of influence from my friend, Yu, who regularly sends letters to Japanese BL mangaka, that convinced me to give it a try myself. So in case anyone stumbles upon this blog while looking for information on how to send fan mail to a Korean artist, Iâll give a brief rundown of how it went: Most publishers list their headquartersâ addresses on their websites. In Polarfoxâs case, I found the address on their main website. Just to be safe, though, I also emailed the contact address listed in their Twitter bio and addressed my inquiry to the editors. They replied with the same address, and I sent my letter by post. Once I received the tracking number, I forwarded it to the Polarfox editor and more or less hoped for the best. A few days later, they emailed me to confirm that the letter had arrived at their office, but I never received confirmation as to whether it had actually been forwarded to Yakkuk. After a month of waiting, I mentioned her on Twitter and asked whether Polarfox had ever sent my letter along. She replied that she hadnât received anything(!), though she was nevertheless excited to read it. It was a little upsetting, especially because I had poured so much affection into that letter. When I emailed Polarfox again, they told me that they had already sent it to Yakkuk. At that point, all I could do was repeat âitâs the thought that countsâ to myself over and over again. So when I arrived in Taipei on the 30th of May, I was equal parts nervous and excited. In the days leading up to the event, I prepared another letter, and despite my poor handwriting in Hangul, I once again poured my heart into it, hoping it would reach hers.Â
If there was one thing this trip drove home, itâs that not even a language barrier can come between a creator and her reader, or between fujoshi. I think a lot of my friends who have traveled to Japan and have met foreign fellow BL fans would probably agree. Even if you canât speak each other's language, your shared enthusiasm for a particular story (or for the genre itself) is enough to connect you in ways the average person could never quite understand. Every BL fan Iâve met has been nothing but kind and generous to me, so whatever demonic caricature people on Twitter dot com insist on projecting onto fujoshi, I can only assume they havenât actually met very many of us.
I believe I was the only English-speaking fan during the book signing event. When I arrived early that morning, I was seated beside fujos who had also woken up at an ungodly hour to meet her. They let me know I was in the right queue, but beyond that we didnât really talk. It wasnât until the second and final queue (to purchase the special edition of A Declaration of Revenge, which doubled as our ticket to the signing) that I finally made a few friends. I had already spotted The Eve Festival ID photos hanging from their bags and their A Declaration of Revenge photocards, so I knew they were my people. But because! I am! A very shy girl! I didnât approach them until we ended up standing beside each other, and they noticed the Jung-won and Gil-sung photocards hanging from my bag as well. It seems that carrying a BL photocard on your bag and showing it to fellow fans has become the modern-day equivalent of exchanging calling cards. From that point onward, they translated all the on-site announcements for me, which made the entire experience infinitely smoother. For that, I am truly, eternally grateful. Despite not speaking Mandarin and my newfound friends knowing only limited English, we somehow spent the entire day talking about Yakkuk and BL.Â
Pinsin Publishing also certainly never expected someone from the anglosphere to attend the book signing, and I know that for a fact because the translation chain during my turn with Yakkuk was a little hilarious. With my very limited Korean, I told her that I had traveled from overseas and that I had sent her a letter a few months earlier. Since Yakkuk doesnât speak English either, she relied on the Taiwanese interpreter to relay her response. The only problem was that the interpreter immediately realized there wasnât much point translating it into Mandarin, since I wouldnât understand that either. So the two of us just looked at each other like, âOh, girl⊠what do we doâŠâ Thankfully! Animate Taipeiâs on-site event photographer stepped in and translated everything to English for me. Yakkuk apologized for never getting the chance to respond to my letter, but I assured her it was okay because I had brought another one and this time, I was certain sheâd actually receive it. I got a little teary after our brief interaction because she was every bit as sweet as Iâd imagined! Even writing this now makes me emotional, because itâs genuinely one of those experiences Iâll be telling my grand-nieces about one day. I returned to my hotel that evening feeling incredibly cared for, carrying snacks, new friendships, and enough memories to sustain me for the rest of the trip.
Meeting Yakkuk is undoubtedly one of the highlights of my fujoshi life. People always say you should never meet your heroes, but events that allow you to tell an artist how much their work means to you are invaluable not only for nurturing communities, but for nurturing the artists themselves. Whether theyâre writers, artists, illustrators, or any other kind of creator you admire, thereâs always merit in letting them know how deeply their work moved you. Creative practice, after all, is an act of offering and exchange. Artists pour so much love into their craft and that love is bound to reach someone who will adore it just as deeply in return. Maybe this also explains my enduring fetish for true love lol. To find a story, recognize the love infused into it, and return that in however way you can, feels like another form of true love. The beautiful and quiet exchange between artist and reader leaves each a little more fulfilled than before.
So yes, as much as everyone enjoys making posts that blow up about their favorite works, itâs just as important to tell the creators themselves how much you appreciate them. Whether itâs motivation, serotonin, or simply reassurance, these exchanges help keep the cycle of creating and engaging with art alive. I think about this line from mememeć çâs 2026 BL Awards acceptance speech that struck me the most:
âManga will always reach someone, and become something to someone. There is nothing meaningless about it. It will continue to shine from the moment it was created.â
To me, it doesnât really matter whether you discovered a story the day it was published or a decade later. As a part-time fatalist, I like to believe that some stories meet you at exactly the right moment: when you need them the most. (The one tweet thatâs like âAnything you read out of curiosity is exactly what you should be reading. Anything you read because you think you should, is not.â) Thatâs why it feels so special when you stumble upon an artist who, in the endless sea of content and stories, somehow cuts through the noise and becomes your ride-or-die. Even rarer is getting the chance to thank that artist face to face and tell them that something they created has made its way to someone who needed it. I feel unbelievably lucky that I got to experience that rare chance. Itâs a moment I know Iâll look back on fondly forever. <3
Whether youâve been following Yakkuk for years or youâre only hearing her name for the first time, I hope this little blog inspires you to step into her wonderful, crazy, beautiful world. If it leads even one new reader to her body of work, Iâll consider it a success.
You can purchase the Taiwanese special edition of A Declaration of Revenge on eslite.com! If you are able, and even if you hate the vertical format, please also consider supporting Yakkukâs ongoing BL, Curveball and Splitter on Manta. Everything else from my diva, you can also purchase and read on Ridibooks.Â
