Love as a Foreign Language
A K-drama-inspired romantic comedy about a Canadian ESL teacher in Seoul who falls for the school secretary—a fish-out-of-water love story about culture shock and cotton-candy kisses.
📖 Oni Press • Started 2004
Joel hates Korea. Every bite of kimchi burns his tongue. The crowds swallow him whole on the streets of Seoul. The language slips through his fingers like water. He’s counting down the days until his contract ends and he can flee back to Canada to reclaim the life he left behind.
Then Hana walks in—the new secretary at the ESL school where he teaches—and everything he thought he wanted shifts in a single heartbeat. She’s beautiful, warm, and utterly unreachable, or so Joel believes. What unfolds is a tender, achingly funny romantic comedy about two people fumbling toward each other across a gap that feels as wide as an ocean: a Canadian drowning in culture shock and a Korean woman who may or may not understand what he’s trying to say—in any language.
Written by J. Torres (Teen Titans Go, Alison Dare, Lola: A Ghost Story) and illustrated by Eric Kim , Love as a Foreign Language is a six-volume series published by Oni Press that ran from 2004 to 2007. Released in manga-sized quarterly installments at 72 pages each, the format gave Torres and Kim the breathing room to build Joel and Hana’s relationship at a natural, unhurried pace—the kind of slow-burn romance that rewards patient readers and makes every stolen glance land like a thunderbolt.
Kim’s artwork is the series’ secret weapon—a Western manga style that balances broad physical comedy (Joel smacking face-first into a sliding door) with quiet, devastating moments of tenderness. His expressive characters and clean, flowing layouts make every page feel alive. As Greg McElhatton wrote in Read About Comics : “Stylistically, Kim’s art is very much his own, defining a look so effortlessly it makes me wonder if he hasn’t really been drawing comics for years while I just wasn’t paying attention.”
Torres brings his signature wit and warmth to the script, drawing on his own experience as an ESL instructor—a job he held before breaking into comics full-time. The dialogue crackles with sharp one-liners (“Korean food seems like the end result of a dare”), while the character development sneaks up on you. Joel starts as a whiny expat stereotype but slowly reveals unexpected layers as Torres peels back his defenses. Hana, meanwhile, emerges as a fully realized person rather than just a romantic ideal—a woman with her own dreams, doubts, and quiet strength.
The series was collected into two omnibus volumes, and in 2024 it celebrated its 20th anniversary with a deluxe hardcover edition that collects the entire story from start to finish for the first time. This edition features remastered colors, new lettering, brand-new cover art drawn by Kim, and exclusive bonus content—a gorgeous package that gives one of indie comics’ most charming romances the treatment it deserves. Originally published by Oni Press, the deluxe edition is distributed by Simon & Schuster.
Perfect for fans of K-drama rom-coms like Crash Landing on You and What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim, as well as American manga-influenced series like Scott Pilgrim and Blankets. If you’ve ever been a stranger in a strange land—or fallen for someone who speaks a different emotional language—this one’s for you.
