The International Readers’ Reception of the Rop’an: The Villainess as the New Hero.

In the Korean web novels’ panorama, the rop’an genre affirmed itself for the first time in 2015, combining the romance genre with fantasy elements. These stories begin when the female protagonist who often reads novels reincarnates in the body of a character in their favorite work. It is common for the female protagonists to end in the body of the villainess of the story. The influence came from the Japanese light novels in 2019, since then the novel works described by the keyword ‘angnyŏ’ (‘villainess’) had an increase of 29%: in 2014 there were 174 works, increasing in 2020 to 603. 1 The study focuses on the villainess figure as the representation of modern society’s gender values and the perception of the international public of this Korean “villain” character.