Cultural city Bucheon Along with angouleme in France, and tottori in Japan, cultural city Bucheon has shifted city's paradigm to become a cultural center.
In 1998, Bucheon started to build Manhwa city. As "story telling" is becoming important in many areas, Bucheon applied "Manhwa" contents, effective source of cultural industry.

Bucheon City Started Manhwa city creation plan started since 1998. More than 70 percentage of comic artists in Korea are currently creating works in Manhwa city Bucheon. City also has many innovative cultural facilities; Korea Manhwa museum, Manhwa creation studio, Manhwa imagination street in Bucheon Station, K-comics Station in Sangdong Station, etc. Along with these facilities, Korea manhwa festival(BICOF) takes place annually, on the third week of August.

Bucheon International Cartoon Festival (BICOF) is the largest cartoon festival in Korea and takes place every August. BICOF first started at 1998. Since then, Bicof attracts 80,000 people each year. The purpose of the festival is to popularize Manhwa to the public and to develop Manhwa industry. The Festival offers the various programs. Every year festival attracts thousands of people who want to experience unique cartoon programs such as Manhwa exhibition shows, and famous cartoonists' signing event.
Due to its rallying power, the number of programs, the festival is one of the largest samples of cartoon festival that are like Angouleme festival, Tokyo manga festival, and sandiago comicon, etc.
BICOF has welcomed many international cartoon exchanges, the festival has played important role in promote Korean Manhwa to the world.

Specific programs

Visitor status

ICC : INTERNATIONAL COMIC ARTIST CONFERENCE is an international civil exchange organization that helps cartoonists from all around the world to share a friendship. ICC also provides opportunities to see each country's different cartoon style, culture, and their thoughts. ICC Korea secretariat is located at KOMACON. Since 1996, annual conference takes place in ICC standing committee member countries : Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.