Webcomic / Teenage Mercenary

Also known as Mercenary Enrollment, Teenage Mercenary is a webtoon originally published in Korean and later licensed for an official English release on the Webtoons app, where all but the latest twenty-five episodes are available to be read for free.

When he was eight years old, Ijin Yu and his parents were caught in a plane crash of which he was the only survivor. Stuck in an unfamiliar, wartorn country Ijin became an adept soldier in order to survive. Foreign soldiers stationed in that country eventually find out about how he still has family in South Korea and arrange for him to be sent home.

While his new life seems peaceful and idyllic, it turns out he'll still be forced to use the skills he built over his ten years away. His sister is being threatened by violent bullies, organized crime rings are very much active in his new home town, and his skillset as a mercenary might be his only viable path to a profitable career once his last year of high school is finally done.

This work contains examples of:

• Big Brother Instinct: Ijin ruins the lives of the bullies who were targeting Dayun. This includes the lead bully's big brother, who enabled her behavior without a second thought.
  • The Major's response to finding a teenager in a warzone is to let him join his squad and help him find his family.
  • 006 says that he felt comradery towards Ijin when he was younger, and this was the reason he lied to his superiors and said Ijin was dead. This allowed Ijin to escape the Camp and by chance run into the Major, putting things in place for him to be reunited with his surviving family.
• Bullying a Dragon: Repeatedly people try to target Ijin or go after his loved ones in his ever-growing circle of family and friends. It never ends well for them.
• Bully Turned Buddy: Jaehyeong Lee and Hyeokjin Ju are the bullies in Ijin's class and initially look to pick a fight with him. Once they realise the massive gap in their fighting abilities they quickly switch to trying to befriend him. Along the way they also become friends with Ijin's friend and their former victim, Yeongchan Park. Eventually, Yeongchan brings up how they used to hurt him before they started hanging out together. They come to realize while they justified their behaviour by keeping their bullying more mundane and less violent than other bullies around the school, it still hurt people. After this frank conversation their behavior seems to drastically improve and they remain close friends with Yeongchan and Ijin.
• Chick Magnet: Everyone is immediately aware of how handsome Ijin is.
• Child Prodigy: Even amongst mercenaries, Ijin's ruthlessness and skill is of note. It later turns out that he didn't get that strong on his own: a secret facility called the Camp found him and trained him.
• Child Soldier: Ijin again, though in this case it's a notable element of his psyche with what's implied to be bouts of PTSD.
• Combat Pragmatist: Modern warfare doesn't care who lives and dies by any sort of well-meaning intentions or a code of honor. So when Ijin is forced to confront opponents, he'll take out their knees, catch their attacks even if it hurts him to outright disable their limbs, and go for nose breaks, jaw punches, throat slams, you name it. When Jiye's own guards try to overwhelm him with strength to cull him in sparring, Ijin takes out his opponents with minimal effort after they tried to play dirty, while unwittingly pointing out he doesn't know actual sparring rules.
• Connected All Along: Jiye just seems to be the older sister of Yeona of the SW Corporation, who is at odds with this weird Ijin kid showing up all her security forces. Then Ijin finds out she's Major Kang's fiancé, and therefore technically family to him in its own way. The result against a group of kidnappers is stupefying amounts of determination to stop them all.
• Covered in Scars: Chapter 133 reveals for the first time what Ijin looks like beneath his clothes, being ripped both in muscles and quite literally thanks to his years of Training from Hell and Child Soldier work under the Camp. Unfortunately, Dayun had entered the room right after — and is immediately horrified upon seeing her brother covered in bullet wounds, cuts, and tears all over his flesh.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: Several antagonists that Ijin initially comes to odds with are either brought to his side by being thrashed and spared, or him overcoming their harsh expectations to actually be a genuine ally. The result is a high-schooler with criminal and corporation connections alike that can practically move heaven and earth the instant something's gone wrong.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Heejin's entire bullying treatment of Dayun is because back in middle school, she was jealous of Dayun's popularity because of her cuteness and a boy she had a crush on liked Dayun over her. So she regularly beat her, extorted her, and utterly tried to cripple every ounce of self-confidence she had.
    • When she witnesses her older brother getting utterly thrashed, Heejin continues to ruthlessly beats Dayun even further as payback, after Ijin straight up blackmails her family with evidence of Heejin's crimes and her father’s political corruptions.
    • Even after Ijin confronts her and her family about the assault, she still considers going after Dayun again and plans to urge her mother to get Dayun’s grandfather, who’s a patrolman, fired. All because Dayun is finally happy to be free from the bullying and according to Heejin, dared act full of herself now that Heejin will leave abroad. To say that she and the rest of her family, for enabling her bullying, to definitely had their downfall coming would be an Understatement.
• Eye Scream: Ijin took out the eye of the leader of the Camp, Mad Dog, who then winds up cornering the Major when he goes back into active combat.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Initially, upon returning to Korea and reuniting with his family, Ijin is enamored with how peaceful it seems and wants to live a quiet life. His insistence he's "just a high schooler" and frequent rejections of offers from powerful people who want to employ his skills shows this mindset. However, danger just will not leave Ijin or those he cares about alone. Eventually, as he considers his future, he considers utilizing his talents as a bodyguard to protect others rather than his earlier approach of stubbornly trying to stamp out all violence in his life altogether.
• It's Personal: Do not ever mess with Ijin's family and companions. The moment he's got personal intentions or owes a debt to someone for their aid, he becomes a One-Man Army.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The reason Ijin took so long to even bother looking for his family is that he had amnesia he only recovered from with help.
• Never My Fault:
  • Kim Heejin is definitely the poster child of this troupe. No matter how much karma bites her in the ass, or how much she gets chewed out for her treatment of her favorite punching bag, she will always blame Dayun as the lightning rod of HER problems and is pissed that Dayun has a protective older brother watching out for her and inflicting karma on her and her gang. Which only happened because, you know, severely bullying Dayun in the first place over a guy she had a crush on along with beating her up AFTER Ijin threaten to reveal her dad’s illegal activities!
  • It definitely runs in the family. In chapter 107, congressman Kim Inbae plots his revenge on Ijin. But he gives Ijin a call just to chew him out because of HIS and his kids suffering, so he wants payback on Ijin for breaking the deal. But as Ijin points out, he didn’t break the deal, it was Kim Inbae; his kid’s returning the next day WAS NOT part of their deal and said deal became null from the moment Heejin attacked his sister AFTER he blackmailed her dad’s corruption dealings! But he refuses to listen and hires gangsters to attack Ijin and his grandfather. It’s a good thing Mr. Cha just so happen to walked into Ijin’s grandfather, has a friendly chat with him, then punched out the gangsters just has they’re about to strike. He decides to send out his men to protect Ijin’s family just in case the gangsters come back.
• Neighbourhood-Friendly Gangsters: Downplayed with Mr. Cha and his gang. They are initially sent to teach Ijin a lesson by a corrupt politician, but walk away with immense respect for Ijin. Over time they develop into allies, helped by Cha's loyalty to his men and the fact that previously he's only really participated in Pragmatic Villainy. Ijin's inspiration and Cha's branch becoming more isolated from the larger gang leads to his faction becoming more active in standing up to unsavoury characters in their territory and helping people out, some even helping Ijin's grandfather pick up garbage partly out of respect for Ijin and partly because Good Feels Good. It’s especially even more heartwarming when Mr. Cha saves Ijin’s grandfather from getting attacked by gangsters hired by said corrupted politician because he wanted revenge on Ijin, so Mr. Cha sends out his men to protect the family.
• Not What It Looks Like: When some club owners Ijin had previously helped but not fully befriended help out his grandfather, they take a selfie together. Ijin mistakes this for a threat to his family.
• Oh, Crap!: A frequent response when somebody who previously felt cocky and powerful in their position realises that the random high schooler they just messed with is far more dangerous than they could've ever imagined.
  • The entire room does this at the end of Chapter 23 when Jiye - daughter of the incredibly powerful and affluent SW corporation - decides to run a background check on Ijin and is promptly told by her contacts to back off. Jiye approached the background check casually and had been doing it more out of spite than anything else after feeling slighted by Ijin, but the realization that his identity is being protected to the extent people are willing to brush aside her investigation sends a chill through the spine of everyone in the room.
• One-Man Army: Both played straight and deconstructed; Ijin is a trained enough soldier and assassin that he can outright tenderize an entire army's worth of people without even breaking much of a sweat. But the majority of the time, he's against more standard thuggish or basic foes that are Underestimating Badassery due to Ijin being nineteen years old, constantly considering him a mere child, and by the time its become a Mook Horror Show many are too dumbfounded or flying in recklessly to catch up, adding to the pile. Against other members of The Camp, as well as trained fighters who go in knowing what they're in for and are just as pragmatic as Ijin is, the tables are far more even; not even the Conservation of Ninjutsu matters, because singular foes need the skill to match up at all.
  • This also applies to the battlefield where life and death are a real variable and Ijin's allowed to go all out. Against guns and bombs, Ijin is still human, so his battle tactics instead become hit-and-run guerilla warfare, rushing down enemy groups that he can catch off-guard before dropping off or utilizing sniping positions he's already scouted out ahead of time. The result is someone constantly appearing and disappearing in the middle of a battle, throwing his enemies off hard enough to make them think there's more than one attacker before they're wiped out.
• Phlebotinum Rebel: While we have yet to see any evidence that the Camp actually enhances its subjects, Ijin later turns out to be this, having been trained for years before being presumed dead on a mission and later found by the Major.
• Relative Button: Do. Not. Mess. With. Ijin's. Family. Unfortunately for Ijin’s enemies, they never learn.
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Ijin has insanely talented combat skills he's honed over a decade, but his new high school friends quickly stop being in awe of him once he proves to be terrible at playing video games.
• Tears of Joy: This is Ijin's grandfather's reaction to finding out that he is alive.
• Technical Pacifist: A promise with Major Kang prior to Ijin's return to South Korea was to not kill anyone, or at least avoid having to. He's actually so infamously prone to violence to resolve hostile problems that his own former comrades bet against how long it would take for him to break this, but he strictly adheres to it.. in Korea. Off the home grounds, anything goes.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • If Kim Heejin had just left Dayun alone after Ijin showed her parents proof of the bullying and of her father’s corruption dealings, her father's political career might still be intact. This is after they sent a career criminal after him and lost. Did she take the hint? NOPE! She and her underlings went as far as to gang up on Dayun as she was on her way to school, force her into a karaoke bar, and beat her black n’ blue while blasting really loud music to hide her screams and their taunts!
    • THEN Heejin wants to attack Dayun one last time before she leaves for America, even as her gang warn her that’s a bad idea, but she refuses to listen. Then Ijin walks in, having heard enough of his sister’s lead bully threats, and it’s strongly implied that he dishes out some serious karma on them.
  • Of all people, it’s Kisoo, Heejin’s brother, who subverts this. After getting his ass beaten BADLY, he obeys Ijin’s threats to stay away from his sister and warns his own sister to stay away from Dayun or he will beat her. Even after all of this, she STILL refuses to listen, so this bites them back as you would have expected.
  • Chapter 107 has Kim Inbae return to come after Ijin's family out of spite after what had happened to his career and family, considering it unfair that Ijin was "living a carefree life" compared to his own stress while refusing to comprehend his own wrongdoings. Somehow he never seemed to float the idea of doing anything beyond a surface level examination of Ijin's life, which results in Mr. Cha, the SW Organization and Ijin all turning their sights on Inbae. It's to the point that Inbae repeatedly remembers Cha's warnings about Ijin during the following encounter, where an entire crime gang of bodyguards are bloodily disabled right before his eyes, and only realizes now that Cha was completely telling the truth so many chapters ago.
• Underestimating Badassery: With his regular clothes and uniform, everyone believes Ijin is just some random kid besides his stoic gaze when serious. Things never end well for those going in expecting an easy fight, as his raw skill allows him to proverbially disassemble any average foe within seconds.
• Would Hit a Girl: Ijin. He fought the female assassin, Krasilla, just as brutally as he has any other assassin thus far. It's also implied that when he cornered the girls who beat Dayun up, in the karaoke booth where they did it, and overheard them plotting to still bully Dayun, that he delivered a savage beatdown on them. But we never see it... the last we see is their terrified expressions as the booth door closes behind him.
• Would Hurt a Child: The parents of Heejin and Kisoo Kim straight up hire an outright gangster to brutalize Ijin to try to save face for their children’s bullying and from getting beaten up by Ijin, and once he reveals he has blackmail on them, the father is implied he was going to try to have him assassinated or at least singled out. Ijin anonymously leaks them before anything can happen, destroying the man's career and financial support.
  • The Camp's response to finding a lost, amnesiac child in the jungle was to train him to become a killer instead of helping him find his way home.
• You Are Number 6: The Camp gives the assassins it trains this treatment.