- / March 11, 2020

Umma's Table features standard cartoon characters: anthropomorphic animals with rounded heads, enormous facial features, and roughly proportional bodies. Emotions are an ever-changing arrangement of minimal lines—worried diagonals, smiling curves, radiating streaks of surprise. But artist Yeon-Sik Hong's hand can also be unexpectedly nuanced.(..)

The London Free Press / March 28, 2020

Yeon-Sik Hong’s Umma’s Table tells the story of one cartoonist’s struggle to maintain his weight, as well as his battle to help maintain the dignity of his dying mother.(..)

blogcritics / April 21, 2020

Umma’s Table by Yeon-Sik Hong and released in English by Drawn Quarterly tells a poignant tale all too familiar in a palatable way that makes it fresh. It has always been part of life for the younger generation to see their parents, who had always been the care-givers, come into the stage of life needing care, but it is especially seen today worldwide as the collective post-war generation grows older. Many nations are seeing the surge in young people coming up, but the older folks do not simply disappear. They fade in a way that changes all of us when we recognize it.

Anime news network / April 16, 2020

Comic artist Madang, his wife, and new baby have just moved to a rural home on the outskirts of Seoul in order to provide the best life they can for their family…and to put some distance between Madang and his parents.

quillandquire / May 04, 2020

How our way of life and health are interconnected with those of our children and parents is of particular interest in this season of global pandemic. In a translation by Vancouver writer Janet Hong, Korean cartoonist Yeon-Sik Hong’s second graphic novel takes a look at how family closeness can be a source of both well-being and grave distress.

the Quietus / June 27, 2020

In a month in which extreme unpleasantness has bubbled to the surface almost everywhere, so too for comics. Much airing of grievances is taking place, and I’ve read a distressing amount from women who have been the victim of predatory and coercive behaviour in the comics world, particularly at cons.

The international Examiner / September 09, 2020

“How did mom cook up all those dishes from her tiny kitchen? For so many years? Umma’s table was bigger than the kitchen itself.” 

the atlantic / August 04, 2017

Novelist Hong Yeon-sik’s is on a collection of books recommended by The Atlantic’s editors and writers

PopMatters / August 11, 2017

Book review: by novelist Hong Yeon-sik

Book Riot / November 02, 2022

What makes a comic underrated? Is it a lack or readers or reviews? Is it a lack of acclaim or attention? Mostly likely, it’s a bit of all of the above, but the metric I’m using for this list to keep things truly and deeply underrated is titles with Goodreads ratings of under (or around) 1,000. That means that very few readers (or at least the ones with an active Goodreads account) have read these comics and graphic novels. And that’s a shame, because these 20 titles are among the best underrated graphic novels — and you’ve probably never even heard of them.