Solo Leveling or 나 혼자만 레벨업 (Na Honjaman Rebereop) is a South Korean web novel written by Chugong. The story follows Sung Jin-woo, the weakest hunter in all of South Korea, who supposedly died but awoke with newfound powers. Like Sung Jin-woo, others hunters have supernatural abilities that they use to seal portals that appear around the world. However, Sung Jin-woo's powers seem to follow a video game system where he can complete quests for rewards, items, weapons, and information. We observe as Sung Jin-woo investigates this power in depth and how this transformation affects his personal life and the world of hunters in general. I won't spoil any plot points so if you want to see how this story pans out Solo Leveling is available to read in Korean at Kakao Page. The interesting thing is that the web novel itself has been adapted into a webtoon/digital comic on Kakao Page and thus is much more visually enticing. The web novel itself is quite good and is far ahead of the current web comic. Solo Leveling is also available in English on certain websites. The official source for the English translation is Tappytoon Comics. So even if there are people here that are not learning Korean, Solo Leveling is still a good read.
As for why I chose to cover Solo Leveling for my authentic cultural artifact, I really enjoyed exploring language through entertainment. What better way to stay engaged in a language then if the content itself is engaging. Although most of my reading of Solo Leveling had been in English ( I read this before starting Korean SDLC ), I intend to reread Solo Leveling using the Korean that I have built up so far. It will take more time to process the dialogue since I will have to jump to a translation machine every once in a while. Despite that, I think that I can learn Korean using this web novel/comic.
One of the reasons that I enjoyed Solo Leveling was because of its fantastic art direction. Their illustrations are done by Dubu (Redice Studio). This studio works on a variety of manhwas and has shown great work consistently. The action sequences have dynamic long screen spreads that are often background worthy. The story, although not original, is quite interesting in how it brings the world of video games into an already fantastical world. This combinations feels very much like a fun thought experiment about what we would do if we had a second chance at life. I am sure many people have entertained this idea in their daydreams and Solo Leveling takes that idea and adds fantastic visuals to our vague imaginations. I would say that the weakest part of this work is the characters in that they aren't that complex. There is not anything ground breaking in how they handle characters and the premise does feel a bit recycled. Despite this, I still find myself wanting more content every week. I would suggest Solo Leveling to anyone who enjoys a power fantasy story and appreciates clean digital art.
Comments
I really like Webtoons too! I think it's actually really helpful to learn Korean from Webtoons because they write dialogue in a way that's a lot more casual and conversation-like than, say, a book or a play. I'll check this one out!
I definitely have seen some of these Korean webtoons and novels. And I really like it when some of these novels are made into animes. I would definitely check this out as it seems really fit my interest! Thank you so much for sharing.
Great cultural post! I know Korea is well known for its Webtoons and novels, so it is cool to see a post about one here. I will definitely check this out when I get the chance. Have you heard of a webtoon called God of Higschool? They recently made this into an anime, and it is really good.