Growing up in Korea as the daughter of medical missionaries, I heard many Korean folk tales, including stories of the legendary Hong Kil Dong. He is a popular Korean hero, the subject of books, comics, TV shows, movies, and animation.

Some of the many versions of Hong Kil Dong in Korea

Many years later, as an adult in the U.S., in the Yen-ching Library at Harvard University, I came upon an English language translation of the entire original novel, Hong Kil Dong Jun, written by Ho Kyun around 1600. At the time I was working on my retelling of another Korean tale, The Princess and the Beggar (published by Scholastic in 1993, now out of print). I was very excited to have found the original source, in both Korean and English, and thought it would make a great book for children. I worked on adapting the story as a picture book for a number of months, with the encouragement of my editor at Scholastic. But when she left for another publisher, I put the project away.

The opening of "Hong Kil Dong" in Korean (with some Chinese characters)

In 1994, I pulled out the rough manuscript and sketches in preparation for a meeting with an editor who expressed interest in seeing everything I was working on. That conversation, in which the editor dropped the phrase “ninja graphic novel," got me fired up on working on the project again. Later that same editor, Judy O’Malley, went to Charlesbridge Publishing to start a line of "bridge books," and offered me a contract for the book.

a detail of the storyboard for the book

The story of Hong Kil Dong was a rich source of material for me in many ways. I was drawn to the poignant struggle of the boy who could not claim his father. Having grown up in a then third world nation struggling to recover from a devastating war, I was moved by the theme of justice for the poor. And I loved the magical aspects of the tale - invisibility spells, making clones out of straw, and the power to fly. Best of all, I got to immerse myself in traditional Korean culture, drawing on what I knew but doing extensive research as well.

It was exhilarating to design the book as a comic, a brand new format for me. (See more about creating the book in my article "The Illustrator's Perspective: COMIX"). I decided to create the illustrations using Korean brush painting, which I had studied during my junior year of college at Ewha Womens University. After twenty years of painting highly rendered, realistic illustrations in watercolor or water soluble pastel, it felt liberating to be working in such a loose medium. Throughout the process, I felt as if the story and the form were not being controlled by me, but rather coming through me. I continue to be surprised and delighted by where this book takes me.