In-Between Seoul and Springfield: Korean Animation and The Simpsons

The Simpsons is the longest running animated sitcom still on the air, with the first episode airing in 1989, and, at every step along the way, this perfectly American TV show has sought to downplay the contributions of Korean animation studio AKOM. Despite AKOM producing the individual frames of animation, American production discourses consistently devalue, Orientalize, and erase the creative labor of Korean animators, otherwise known as “in-betweeners.” 

AKOM Production Company, founded by Nelson Shin in 1985, formed a partnership with Gracie Films and Klasky Csupo during production of the first season of The Simpsons in 1989. 1  The studio performs original equipment manufacturing (OEM) work, sometimes referred to as Overseas Animation because the studios that produce OEM animation are mainly Asian countries with more affordable labor. The term OEM in the context of auto or tech manufacturing refers to outsourced production of component parts that are assembled and sold by another company. 2  In the case of animation, these component parts are individual drawings of Homer Simpson, or any other moving object, that, when stitched together, make up the animation we see on TV. Often referred to as “in-betweeners,” Korean animators have been crucial to American TV animation for decades, inking and coloring the frames of animation that are broadcast around the world. 

For a typical episode, the writers put together a script, which is then performed and recorded by voice actors. 3  The characters are then drawn in a storyboard, which is essentially a comic book version of the final episode showing only the “key poses” of the characters. This storyboard is then matched with the recordings in an animatic. The director creates a detailed list of instructions (including the timing and lip shapes for each scene) called an exposure sheet, which is mailed along with the animatic to AKOM, where hundreds of animators draw the frames of animation “in-between” the key poses of the storyboard. 4  In the early years of The Simpsons, these in-betweens were hand-drawn and painted on sheets of transparent cellophane called animation cels. Cel animation was replaced with a technique called digital ink and paint in the early 2000s, but the colored and drawn animation frames are still produced in Korea by AKOM.

Korean Animation as Depicted in The Simpsons

In a 2010 episode of The Simpsons, executive producer Al Jean invited the anonymous graffiti artist Banksy to be a guest storyboard artist for their traditional “couch gag.” Through comic exaggeration, this segment tries to create a tongue-in-cheek satire of the exploitative labor practices that contribute to The Simpsons’ massively successful franchise and merchandising. Instead, the segment obscures the lived experiences of the very artists who brought the storyboard to life, Orientalizing animation labor in Asian countries as comparable to slavery and conflating the artistic work of animators and colorists at South Korean animation studio AKOM with the factory labor that produces merchandise. While both forms of labor involve economic exploitation, animators are producing artistic works which are consumed by their audience as works of culture rather than mass produced commodities. 

The couch gag depicts the Korean animators working in sweatshop conditions surrounded by rats, bones, toxic chemicals. It also depicts child labor and animal cruelty. A charitable reading of the segment would interpret the scene as satire of the heavy workloads, strict deadlines, and wage penalties faced by Korean animators, as well as the economic exploitation inherent in outsourcing labor to other countries. Whether or not it was intentional, a valid interpretation of this scene is that Banksy and the Simpsons writers view labor in Korea as inherently less free, less creative, and less valuable than American labor. According to Time, before its release, Nelson Shin told the American studio that the sequence was “excessive and offending.” 5  

This wasn’t the first example of The Simpsons portraying Asian people in stereotypical or racist ways. The 2017 documentary, The Problem with Apu, addressed the “minstrelsy” of white actor Hank Azaria playing an offensive stereotype of an Indian convenience store owner and the hypocrisy that he refused to appear in the documentary out of the fear of being misrepresented. As Hari Kondabolu points out in the film “He gets to choose how he gets to be portrayed,” but Asian people have no say in the matter. 6  AKOM employees were certainly not consulted when Banksy submitted his storyboards showing Koreans enslaving pandas and killing cats. 

As for depictions of Korean animators, there are only a few examples. A Season 4 episode featured a news report from Kent Brockman about the Korean animators behind Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie. The CEO of Nelson Shin once responded to this clip in an interview saying the scene was “Looking at it pessimistically,” clearly taking issue with the negative representation of his company as a sweatshop. 7  A couch gag in Season 11 saw the Simpsons as paint-by-numbers, as a team of Korean colorists rush to color them, leaving the lines for Homer’s eyes unfinished. In the season 16 episode “Fat Man and Little Boy,” when Homer ridicules the quality of Korean animation, his mouth becomes detached from his face. The season 30 episode “E My Sports” saw the Simpsons finally visiting Seoul to participate in an E-Sports competition, and they pass a building labeled “SIMPSONS ANIMATION STUDIO AND CASINO.” In each example, either the quality of animation, the legitimacy of the industry, or the creativity of the labor is the butt of the joke. 

Animation Errors and Visibility

As indicated by the two jokes about animation errors, Korean animation becomes the most visible to the American studios when the completed animation contains mistakes. Once the animatic is sent overseas, AKOM cannot request clarification on the directions for their animators, leading to miscommunications and mistakes which are consistently blamed on the in-betweeners in denigrating and racist ways.

In the Season 1 DVD commentaries, creator Matt Groening consistently places the blame for animation errors on Korean studios, even when greater specificity on his part could have prevented them. For example, he notes in one episode that “The bananas were colored wrong, I guess they don’t have bananas in Korea.” It should be noted that colors are usually indicated on the exposure sheets or prop sheets produced in America, though the error could really have occurred at any stage of production. In another episode, a gag related to English words on a document was ruined by miscommunication, again with Groening blaming the in-betweeners, saying “obviously the Korean animators couldn’t quite figure out what the character was and there was some weird letter like from On Beyond Zebra, the Dr. Seuss book.” As many gags later would indicate, Korean animators are perfectly capable of communicating written English in the backgrounds of scenes, but the text must be made clear and documented on the exposure sheet. Korean animation is worth mentioning only in their failures, which are defined by failing to interpret the intent of creators in a different continent who speak a different language. 

In addition to creator commentaries, many behind-the-scenes or making-of featurettes for the Simpsons neglect or erase Korea as a site of animation production. The interviewees tend to treat Korea as an elsewhere, noting the time in-between animatic and finished product, but not the work or the strict deadlines that go into producing the frames of animation. At most, they will feature one shot of someone’s hands inking and painting an animation cel. 8  The overseas animation process is usually described from the writer’s or director's perspective, purely in terms of how long it takes for the animation to get back. The notable exception to this is the IFC documentary series Split Screen, which flew a crew to Korea to interview Nelson Shin and several employees at work animating the show. Of course, not every behind-the-scenes documentary has the budget to fly to Korea, but this was the only documentary that attempted to capture the extent of the labor at AKOM. 

Theorizing In-Betweeners

In her ethnographic research of the Korean Animation industry, Ae-ri Yoon has discussed how globalization situates Korea as an “in-between” in terms of both labor and geography. 9  The liminality of their labor is also highlighted by the precarity of the Korean animation industry. According to a study by Hyejin Yoon at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, although a more skilled labor pool has made some minor improvements to working conditions “the production system and the work environment have not improved significantly.” 10  According to Yoon, the American TV animation industry tends to “seek lower production costs through labor exploitation,” which makes it difficult to grow when wage increases also raise the risk of being undercut by China, the Philippines, India, or Vietnam. 11  The expense of hand-drawn or digital in-betweens has driven some studios to look for automated solutions that would eliminate OEM animation altogether. Programs like Toon Boom can already generate “tweens” by tracing the paths of objects, much like the Key Frames features in video editors and CGI animation software. While not a threat today, Jeffrey Katzenberg has suggested in an interview that artificial intelligence would cut animation costs significantly. 12  If AI image generators were used to smooth animation, the likely targets of cost-cutting would be overseas in-betweeners. OEM animators are always squeezed between script and screen, between automation and outsourcing, and between visibility and invisibility. 

The framing of OEM animators as little more than smoothers for the real creative labor of the American storyboard artists creates a false binary. Storyboards are seen to cause the in-betweens and thus subordinate them. In reality, storyboards are merely the virtual form of the animation whereas in-betweens are the actual. Storyboards are the writing whereas in-betweens are the filming. Storyboards are pre-production and in-betweens are production. 

Groening and others see in-betweeners as smoothers, making animation look fluid, but in reality, they contribute a human roughness that cannot be replicated by machines or digital AI technology. This can be likened to Walter Benjamin’s idea of the aura of the artist, which is not replicated by machines, but by anonymous human hands. 13  Often, automated animation is described as looking rough because it lacks humanity in its movement, but this movement is, in fact, too smooth. It mechanically interpolates the frames of movement needed to get from point A to point B. What it cannot do is make the roughness of movement present in hand-drawn animation. 

This deconstruction of the notion of in-betweeners as subordinate smoothers is not only correct, but also intuitive. Collectors of The Simpsons memorabilia already recognize this perspective, based on their valuation of in-betweens as commodities. Animation Production Cels (the hand-drawn, inked, and painted cels from the early seasons of The Simpsons) are often sold at auction for thousands of dollars, whereas storyboard sketches and concept art sell for much less. 14  This is because fans feel that owning a cel is like owning a piece of the show itself. 

Fans also value in-betweens through their appropriation of individual still frames of animation for memes and in-jokes. They might take an inconsequential frame, one not intended or sketched by American artists, featuring Lisa Simpson halfway through blinking and use it as a meme about caffeine addiction. 15  Other memes rely on the roughness and surrealism of animation errors, such as the image macro titled “Quality Ned Flanders,” which, due to a mistake in the cel layout, shows his head peeking out from behind his shirt collar while his “ok” hand gesture chops a hole out of his neck. 16  A minor character, Smithers, was miscolored in his first appearance, leading many to refer to him as “Black Smithers,” an error also featured in several memes. 

One could argue that in-betweens are undervalued, but still subordinate to the writing, because the OEM artists have no creative agency. This too is a false dichotomy. Character design and consistency is particularly important for The Simpsons, which makes a bulk of its profits from selling licensed character images on merchandise. For the in-betweeners interviewed by IFC for Split Screen, character designs are not static, but evolve over time, through contributions from both AKOM and Gracie Films. The translator repeats an in-betweener’s sentiment that changes to designs are “not really anybody’s idea.” Instead, the animators agree that, while drawing the same thing over the years, the “lines get simpler.” The designs of the Simpsons family were much more difficult to animate in the original Tracey Ullman Show sketches, and the designs have evolved gradually since then. For example, early Simpsons models had “trumpet mouth” or “twister mouth,” where a character’s mouth would be backwards for a frame or two. This was difficult for Korean animators to do consistently, so it was gradually removed from the art style. Character design for The Simpsons is a negotiated, trial-and-error process in which American animators and Korean animators each influence the final designs of the characters.

Conclusion

The future of the Korean animation industry remains uncertain. Pressures from market trends, labor costs, and automation threaten the OEM artists responsible for in-betweening American Television animation today. By rejecting the orientalized and derogatory discourses of The Simpsons writers and producers in favor of the fan discourses that celebrate the work of OEM animators, we can more accurately value their contributions to the overall quality of the show. The purpose of this article is not to simply denounce the racist discourses of one American studio, but to show the reflexive devaluing of Korean animation. The labor that goes into this beloved animated sitcom takes place both in Korea and America, and the authorship of the show exists somewhere in-between. 

Footnotes

• 1

  Anjali Rao, “Interview with Nelson Shin,” CNN, 2007, https://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/10/18/talkasia.nelsonshin/index.html.

• 2

  Ae-Ri Yoon, “In between the Values of the Global and the National:,” in Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in Northeast Asia, ed. Chris Berry, Nicola Liscutin, and Jonathan D. Mackintosh (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009).

• 3

   John Ortved, The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History (Tantor Media, 2014).

• 4

  Chris Plante, “How an Episode of The Simpsons Is Made,” The Verge, October 25, 2015, https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/25/9457247/the-simpsons-al-jean-interview.

• 5

   Geoffrey Cain, “South Korean Cartoonists Cry Foul Over The Simpsons,” Time, October 30, 2010, https://time.com/archive/6951278/south-korean-cartoonists-cry-foul-over-the-simpsons/.

• 6

  The Problem with Apu, dir. Michael Melamedoff (2017; Los Angeles: Avalon Television).

• 7

  “THE SIMPSONS in Korea,” Split Screen (IFC, 1999), The Criterion Channel, https://www.criterionchannel.com/split-screen-season-eight-1/season:1/videos/split-screen-s8-e1-the-simpsons-in-korea.

• 8

  “The Simpsons: Behind the Scenes” (WUHF FOX Rochester, 1992), Rochester TV Archive, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6stjHLHjdf8; “Behind The Scenes of ‘The Simpsons’ with David Silverman, THR - YouTube,” accessed August 1, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJQC9BM63ng; The Simpsons: America’s First Family. Ralph Lee, dir. (London: BBC, 2000).

• 9

  Yoon, “In between the Values of the Global and the National.”

• 10

  Hyejin Yoon, “Globalization of the Animation Industry: Multi-Scalar Linkages of Six Animation Production Centers,” International Journal of Cultural Policy 23, no. 5 (2017): 634–51. 

• 11

  Yoon, “Globalization of the Animation Industry.”

• 12

  Jeff Katzenberg Says AI Will Cut Cost of Animated Films by 90%”  2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=fkJlwjKdxnI.

• 13

   Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 2007): 217-252.

• 14

  “Your Guide to Simpsons Cels,” The Simpsons Forever, accessed June 16, 2023, https://www.simpsonsforever.com.

• 15

  “Lisa Simpson’s Coffee,” Know Your Meme, accessed August 1, 2024, https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lisa-simpsons-coffee.

• 16

  “The Simpsons: Ned Flanders Animation Error Hoop Art by @inter_slice,” Pinterest, accessed August 1, 2024, https://www.pinterest.com/pin/141511613282203239/.