What Does Manhwa Mean?
Fandom CultureKorean comics, typically published as vertically scrolling digital webtoons in full color. Titles like Solo Leveling built enormous international fandoms with major AO3 presence.
Manhwa in Practice
Manhwa refers to Korean comics broadly, though the form international fans know best is the smartphone-native vertical-scroll webtoon. The 2010s and 2020s saw manhwa adaptations of Korean webnovels become global phenomena, and their fandoms imported webnovel fandom's whole ecosystem: novel readers versus adaptation readers, spoiler etiquette, and fierce debates over which version of events counts. Korean BL manhwa also carved out a large fandom territory of its own. In fic spaces, manhwa fandoms behave much like manga fandoms, complete with scanlation culture and the eternal wait between chapters.
Example usage
"The manhwa is gorgeous but the novel readers keep making ominous comments about what's coming in season three."
Related Terms
Webnovel
A novel serialized online, usually chapter by chapter on a dedicated platform. Webnovels from China, Korea, and Japan are the source material for many of the largest fandoms in current AO3 culture.
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Manhua
Chinese comics, parallel to Japanese manga and Korean manhwa. Many danmei and baihe webnovels receive manhua adaptations that serve as visual canon for their fandoms.
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Scanlation
A fan-made translation of a comic, produced by scanning (or ripping) the original pages and replacing the text — scan plus translation. Scanlation groups historically made manga accessible to readers outside Japan.
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BL (Boys' Love)
The umbrella term for media and fanworks centered on romance between male characters, originating in Japanese publishing and now used internationally. BL covers everything from chaste romance to explicit work, replacing the older yaoi/shounen-ai split.
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