• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.67-88
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• 2019

Webtoon is a Korean-style digital comics platform that distributes comics content produced using the characteristic elements of the Internet in a form that can be consumed online. With the recent rapid growth of the webtoon industry and the exponential increase in the supply of webtoon content, the need for effective webtoon content recommendation measures is growing. Webtoons are digital content products that combine pictorial, literary and digital elements. Therefore, webtoons stimulate consumer sentiment by making readers have fun and engaging and empathizing with the situations in which webtoons are produced. In this context, it can be expected that the sentiment that webtoons evoke to consumers will serve as an important criterion for consumers' choice of webtoons. However, there is a lack of research to improve webtoons' recommendation performance by utilizing consumer sentiment. This study is aimed at developing consumer sentiment pattern maps that can support effective recommendations of webtoon content, focusing on consumer sentiments that have not been fully discussed previously. Metadata and consumer sentiments data were collected for 200 works serviced on the Korean webtoon platform 'Naver Webtoon' to conduct this study. 488 sentiment terms were collected for 127 works, excluding those that did not meet the purpose of the analysis. Next, similar or duplicate terms were combined or abstracted in accordance with the bottom-up approach. As a result, we have built webtoons specialized sentiment-index, which are reduced to a total of 63 emotive adjectives. By performing exploratory factor analysis on the constructed sentiment-index, we have derived three important dimensions for classifying webtoon types. The exploratory factor analysis was performed through the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) using varimax factor rotation. The three dimensions were named 'Immersion', 'Touch' and 'Irritant' respectively. Based on this, K-Means clustering was performed and the entire webtoons were classified into four types. Each type was named 'Snack', 'Drama', 'Irritant', and 'Romance'. For each type of webtoon, we wrote webtoon-sentiment 2-Mode network graphs and looked at the characteristics of the sentiment pattern appearing for each type. In addition, through profiling analysis, we were able to derive meaningful strategic implications for each type of webtoon. First, The 'Snack' cluster is a collection of webtoons that are fast-paced and highly entertaining. Many consumers are interested in these webtoons, but they don't rate them well. Also, consumers mostly use simple expressions of sentiment when talking about these webtoons. Webtoons belonging to 'Snack' are expected to appeal to modern people who want to consume content easily and quickly during short travel time, such as commuting time. Secondly, webtoons belonging to 'Drama' are expected to evoke realistic and everyday sentiments rather than exaggerated and light comic ones. When consumers talk about webtoons belonging to a 'Drama' cluster in online, they are found to express a variety of sentiments. It is appropriate to establish an OSMU(One source multi-use) strategy to extend these webtoons to other content such as movies and TV series. Third, the sentiment pattern map of 'Irritant' shows the sentiments that discourage customer interest by stimulating discomfort. Webtoons that evoke these sentiments are hard to get public attention. Artists should pay attention to these sentiments that cause inconvenience to consumers in creating webtoons. Finally, Webtoons belonging to 'Romance' do not evoke a variety of consumer sentiments, but they are interpreted as touching consumers. They are expected to be consumed as 'healing content' targeted at consumers with high levels of stress or mental fatigue in their lives. The results of this study are meaningful in that it identifies the applicability of consumer sentiment in the areas of recommendation and classification of webtoons, and provides guidelines to help members of webtoons' ecosystem better understand consumers and formulate strategies.

• (The) Korean Journal of Advertising
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.51-80
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• 2018

This study aims to investigate how the storytelling elements of brand webtoon has influence on developing brand webtoon users' parasocial interaction relationship and their attitude towards brand webtoon contents and word of mouth intention. The results of this study shows that parasocial interaction is strongly influenced by the sub-dimensions of digital storytelling components of brand webtoon (i.e., relevance, trustworthiness, clarity). More specifically, respondents who perceive that the given message of digital storytelling in brand webtoons is relevant to the brand, is trustworthy, and is clear to understand show a higher degree of parasocial interaction with the webtoon content and in turn, it has a strong positive influence on the attitude towards the brand webtoon. In sum, this study not only provides a theoretical foundation to understand how consumers develop parasocial interaction with brand webtoons in terms of the brand webtoon's digital storytelling, but this study has implications for practitioners who are interested in using a brand webtoon for marketing.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.980-987
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• 2015

Most of cultural area which people enjoy and consume is kitsch culture, though the culture is barely acknowledged. In this multimedia era, people create, publish and enjoy contents of 'webtoon(web+cartoon)', which is relatively faster and more convenient to enjoy comparing to published cartoon. Contrarily to its physical growth, the webtoon shows difficulty in advancing with other genres, is full of irritative factors and contents, and has tough time to become more sophisticated one. This study derived characteristics of kitsch in webtoon, suggested the way of webtoon as an art by analyzing conditions and usage motivation of webtoon. The conditions of kitsch are uniformity of mass consumption, popular vein, catharsis, vicarious satisfaction, immediate feedback-requiring image flood, and reproduction of techniques. The usage motivations of webtoon are studied as pursuit of information, entertainment, relaxation, socialization, convenience, and effectiveness. Usage motivation factors in webtoon and kitsch culture are almost identical. Contrary to its past of being underestimated and vulgarly considered, kitsch is acknowledged as an 'kitsch art'. By studying the process of becoming an art, the study has its purpose to suggest the experimental and developing way to make webtoon be acknowledged as 'webtoon art'.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.91-100
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• 2015

The environment of using digital devices has been developed day by day, as mobile communication network has been fast and smart phone and tablet PC have been spread. When the environment changing, the contents consumers prefer have been changing too. The Webtoon became the representative contents of 'Snack culture'. The webtoon has led the growth of cartoon market for years recently instead of the slow comics growth. And it places its elf as contents on a firm basis, as it has been adapted to another genre such as Pay, Flm, TV Drama. Now it's expected to be an extgeneration contents that will lead Han-ryu(Korean wave). Though the webtoon has important and strong presence, there is no digital archive for collecting and preserving the webtoon, Korean Cartoon Contents Agency started making 'webtoon archive', but the groundwork and the study on the webtoon that represents digital culture contents are not enough a lot. In this study, the cases on digital archiving of culture contents in Korea are researched, and the direction on webtoon archiving that has just started is also discussed. The Archiving of webtoon that can't be seperated from digital contents is connected with archiving of digital culture contents in direction where they should be headed to.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.37-46
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• 2018

This study investigated the differences of message effect by product types and placement types of webtoon PPL(Product Placement). The study have tried to find effective webtoon PPL type and product type to minimized consumers' advertising avoidance. For analysis, two-way between subject design was produced by product types(utilitarian and hedonic product) and webtoon PPL placdement types(image, insert, and combination type). In results, there was a difference by PPL placement types for brand attitude. In special, the insert type had highly positive brad attitude. For webtoon contents, highly positive attitude was discovered in the cases of the hedonic product and the insert type of webtoon PPL.

• (The) Korean Journal of Advertising
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• v.28 no.8
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• pp.111-132
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• 2017

This study investigates how consumers' need for uniqueness and for self-expression have influence on their attitude towards brand webtoon contents and word of mouth intention. The results of this study shows that among the sub-dimensions of brand webtoon users' need for uniqueness, unpopular choices has a significantly positive influence on their need for self-expression, and in turn it has a strong positive impact on both attitude towards the webtoon content and intention of word of mouth. In particular, the data show that respondents' perceived perception of the persuasive intent of the brand webtoon moderates the effect of need for self-expression on the attitude towards the content. More specifically, respondents who perceive the persuasive intent in brand webtoon show a lesser degree of favourable attitude towards the content than do respondents who do report a low level of perception of persuasive intent of the brand webtoon. In sum, this study not only provides a theoretical foundation to understand how consumers perceive brand webtoons in terms of their need for uniqueness and for self-expression, but the study has implications for practitioners who are interested in using a brand webtoon for marketing.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.44
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• pp.235-261
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• 2016

Media consumers in the context of the Internet and digital media are using the same content to a variety of platforms. As such, the content of various genres is converted to the form of a new content through the process of fusion, combination, transformation, differentiation, reproduction, etc on the basis of digital media. That is referred to as trans-media. In order to create the successful content in trans-media era, it requires the work of Edi-curation. Edi-curation work is the act of editing and adding meaning to the curation work of curators. In that sense, this paper analyzed the definition and meaning for Edi-curation of publishing and comic(webtoon) content in trans-media era. Edi-curation process induces the changing role of consumers and producers of content in the digital media experience. In process of Edi-curation, consumers(producers) will soon lead to a media producer(consumer), namely proconsumer / produser. Diversification of digital platforms and devices, digital 1 person (or SNS) appeared in the media, etc. are also required to Edi-curation of content and comic(webtoon) published in a variety of ways. Depending on the intention of media producers (or consumers), content through the process of replication, montage, disassembly, dismantling, hypertext, compression, and reconstruction births to new content. The work of Edi-curation has the significance that it affects the way the media producers work in creative process, as well as the reading content of the media consumers. In the publishing content, Edi-curation work is the logicality destruction of a chapter or a paragraph, a sentence of colloquialisms, card news, the deformation of the utilization of video and media content. Meanwhile in the comic(webtoon) content, we mention the destruction of cut(frame), the various modifications of speech bubbles, onomatopoeia, and mimetic word.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.19
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• pp.145-159
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• 2010

Similar to the other cultural contents, the character industry is based on the media which acts as the technological background. In fact, the character industry is the process of that a created character accesses to the consumers via media, builds its value and becomes licensed as a brand in the market. Therefore, it is crucial to select the most effective media for the consistence of a character in the market, as well as for construction of a higher brand quality of the character. Today, "Webtoon" might be considered as one of the marketing means which utilizes the Internet media for raising the character as a brand. Webtoon has apparent strength because it can be produced in shorter period and with less expense than through other media. Furthermore, Webtoon can be simply featured by the easiness of two-way communication and transference to another media through it. For these reasons, and according to the result of analyzing some Korean Webtoons, it seems obvious that the most effective media in character marketing is the Internet. In addition to the Internet, the strategic development in the media-mix is also important for establishing a brand of a character. However, the effective media-mix is available only when the character's external identity meets with the trait of its media. For the purpose of learning how the media-mix works when a character reaches for the consumers, a character "Hamataeng" was born and used in the experiment. This study will explain the marketing process through the use of own-created Webtoon and other contents, and suggest the ways to build a brand of a character. In addition, it is also indicated that a media-mixing strategy for transformation and expansion of the character to other media.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.39-54
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• 2018

This study aims to expand K-Wave business. For this, it firstly investigated previous studies and pointed out limitations of the current scope of the K-Wave business. Therefore, as a theoretical background, it attempts to construct an analysis framework based on four types of creativity type model and to redefine the concept of K-Wave business, which refers to a series of business activities that create, utilize the asset, and reuse the originality of intellectual property assets. This study analyzes the business activities of K-Wave's asset creation, utilization, and talent linkage during 2013~2017. The scope of the asset creation covers the highest ranked movies, dramas, and K-pops, while the utilization of those is analyzed in cosmetics, food, and fashion industries. The personal talent is the source of new K-Wave value creation and Webtoon IP is analyzed. As a result, in the case of movies and dramas, the representative market is China, which is the result of the efforts to avoid the continuation of China's regulation and the development of local OTTs. It is confirmed that the product development for Chinese consumers is active as activities of K-Wave utilization in cosmetics, food and fashion. Interesting is that new K-Wave content is circulated in the beauty sector. Finally, it is confirmed that Webtoon IP, which has been structured with a solid story in individual talent, is the origin of new K-Wave asset creation such as movies and dramas.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.41
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• pp.553-578
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• 2015

The Korean society was forcefully merged with the invasion of Japan in 20th century, and traditional culture of Korea was damaged severely by colonization from Japan. After liberation, Korean society experienced drastic social change with Korean War, and industrial economy and democratic system developed as modernization and democratization occurred. However, Korean traditional culture dissolved more severely as Korean society developed industrial economy and democracy. As criticism of existing Western center of society and the emphasis of cultural identity of non-western regions and third-world, world society preferred exchange of culture of diverse nations and people with each other in advent of postmodernism thoughts in mid-late 20th century. If the cultural identity of Korea was dissolving meanwhile, it was needed to be recovered again. Despite the research in Korean history, language, art, architecture was performed to recover cultural identity of Korea, it did not go in-depth with Korean mythology, for Korean mythology is considered as superstition or savage. Mythology shows subconscious group psychology of people who live in certain specific region. Studying Korean mythology is one of the ways to rediscover cultural identity of Korea. In order for Korean mythology to be known to many people, its stories should be told by media. There were movies, plays, drama, and novels produced based on existing Korean mythology as introduction, then these mythical stories are appear in subculture contents such as recent comics, animation, webtoon, games, and light novels. Then population of game players and webtoon readers increased as dissemination of PC and smart phones, and increasing market scale of subculture contents increased a population of consumers of comics, animation, and light novel. Consumers of sub-culture contents were interested as many of these contents were created, base on Korean mythology. Therefore, this paper is written as research on Korean mythology and its signification in sub-cultural contents which were produced base on Korean mythology.