“Jaeyeon’s Diary” and “Bott Pharm Toon” are cartoons on Instagram which portray their school life at Ewha. Illustrated by Ewha students, these accounts have gained many followers by depicting details of school life and entertaining facets of their personal lives.
As their accounts began to gain attention, the school’s Office of Communications offered to work together on behalf of promoting Ewha. These two student-cartoonists are Jo Jae-yeon and Song Yu-bin.
Jo Jae-yeon, a sophomore majoring in Library & Information Science, is the creator of “Jaeyeon’s Diary.” She posts one-cut cartoons of her daily life on her Instagram account. Her concept of a cartoon diary that contains life as an Ewha student received rave reviews from not only peers but also from students hoping to attend the university. She started such an account because she felt her college life was so special that she wanted to keep a record of it. Her passion for drawing was what encouraged her to share her works in the form of cartoons on social media.
It was in the summer of 2019 when Jo was offered to do collaboration work with the school’s Office of Communications. As the school was planning a project called “Ewha Life,” they were casting several social media creators in Ewha and Jaeyeon’s Diary was asked to be a part of it.
“I think “Jaeyeon’s Diary” tells life at Ewha in a much more interesting way, such as introducing where I eat or rest at school,” Jo said. “As I draw about personal events at school, high school students can obtain a more vivid impression of how their lives might be once they enter.”
Jo remarked that her goal in 2019 was to post one cartoon a day consistently. In 2020, she aims to post cartoon diaries everyday while working on other projects she plans to pursue. Instead of focusing on narrating cartoons of her daily life, Jo hopes to create posts that other people can relate to. In this sense, she is starting a new project which is to draw memes that people find funny.
As for “Bott Pharm Toon,” it is an Instagram page which has humorous cartoons on the life of a pharmacy student. The cartoonist is Song Yu-bin, who is in her sixth year of the College of Pharmacy.
“I was always the funny one among my friends,” Song chuckled. “My friends would ask me to draw my daily episodes and when I did, I got approximately 200 likes on Instagram, which made me continue from then on.”
Song admitted she did continue posting with the expectation that the Office of Communications would contact her. When it did, she focused not only on her entertaining anecdotes but also on informative content on the College of Pharmacy. Song posted a series of her experiences preparing for admissions to the college as well as the tests and projects after she got accepted. For her, the most memorable episode was introducing the college. This episode was special to her since the College of Pharmacy’s Dean reviewed her work to help her if the cartoons needed any clarification.
Although Song finds it hard to balance her studies, practical work, and drawing cartoons, her friends and followers on Instagram have motivated her to upload as consistently as possible. Song plans on drawing her life as an international graduate student after she graduates.