September 25, 2024 | By Catherine Darling Fitzpatrick (SF16)

A lifelong enjoyer of Asian web comics, Seung Eun Lee (A19) today works as a producer for the global digital platform Manta Comics—a role she thrives in thanks to studying the Great Books in America. 

Lee grew up speaking Korean at home, Spanish in social situations, and English at her international school as the daughter of South Korean missionaries in Paraguay. While looking at colleges, Lee found herself drawn to St. John’s pedagogical approach after speaking with a helpful guidance counselor. Initially drawn by the school’s strong financial support for international students, she was impressed by the Program’s breadth and applied to the Annapolis campus, moving to the U.S. in 2015 to begin her studies.

To her surprise, Lee found that she felt more at home in Annapolis than she had felt in Paraguay or South Korea. Even so, she faced specific cultural challenges upon starting the Program. Her academic approach was very literal, a trait that often reared its head during seminar. “One of the tutors would ask something like, ‘What makes a king?’ she recalls, “and I would pull out my dictionary. ‘Well, you see, in the dictionary it says a king is...’”

Lee says it took some practice to develop abstract thinking skills—and to truly “get” jokes outside of her cultural context, including various lines and plot points in comedies by playwrights like Aristophanes. “At that time, I didn’t consider ‘just to be ridiculous’ as an acceptable reason for a character to do something,” she says, clarifying that excessive comedic silliness can be viewed as a “a waste of time” in Korean culture. Translating abstract ancient Greek into direct English and back again helped her bridge this gap, as did encountering other examples of international humor such as the dry subtleties of French works like Moliere’s Le Misanthrope. Over time, she grew to appreciate Aristophanes and the value of the absurd, culminating with her helping to plan her graduating class’s Frogs-themed senior prank.

Senior year was particularly challenging for Lee, especially its math courses, but she “loved Euclid,” she says. “Moving on from that to something like Lobachevsky felt so wrong!” Lee also enjoyed reading works by philosophers like Emmanuel Kant and wrote her senior essay on Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. When she wasn’t holed up in the library, Lee also ran ἱστορία (Historia), a student-run magazine of academic writings and dialogue.

By graduation in 2019, Lee had developed a keen interest in publishing and content creation. Prior to finding her way into the web comics industry, she spent a year or so working as a tutor in America, primarily assisting Chinese and Korean students preparing for standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT. Then came COVID-19, and Lee suddenly found herself thousands of miles from family amid a global crisis. Despite having only visited Korea during her parents’ furloughs from missionary work, Lee decided to relocate there—and, shortly after her move to Korea, she jumped at a new opportunity to join Manta Comics as a localization editor.

Lee’s longstanding passion for Korean comics, nurtured since childhood, fueled her eagerness to dive deeper into the creative process. Her new role also involved an amusing task: reviewing Korean comics before they were translated to English to identify content that may be offensive to North American readers. After struggling with Western humor in college, one of Lee’s early tasks ironically involved translating pun-laden Korean humor to English, which can require creating entirely new puns—all while synchronizing translated content with the characters’ mouth movements.

Lee attributes her career advancements in the webcomics industry to skills she developed at St. John’s, particularly her language translation abilities, her curiosity, and her tendency to seek a comprehensive understanding of whatever task she has at hand. These, along with her strong critical thinking skills, have consistently set her apart in her workplace and enabled her advancement.

Lee has worked as a producer at Manta Comics since 2021, overseeing artists and writers for the entire comic creation and optimization process. But she still remembers her early tutoring days in the U.S. and Korea, and how her students focused more on extracting answers and memorizing information than engaging with the course material in a holistic manner. Conversations with them often revealed a desire for definitive formulas to achieve success, reflecting a mindset of mechanistic learning—one that Lee was able to break free from herself while engaging in the Program. “In this journey from test prep tutor to localization editor to producer,” Lee says, “my St. John’s education has been vital.”