• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.51
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• pp.255-291
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• 2018

The domestic cartoon industry has went through rapid reformation since 2010 incurred by the emergence of webtoon. Most of the students in cartoon schools long to become webtoonists rather than published cartoonists. Cartoon education in middle and high schools rather focuses on webtoons. The growth of webtoons in private education, excluding college entrance examination, is even more promising. In the same train of thought, the number of webtoon private education institution has surged exponentially. Despite provincial colleges experiencing difficulty due to the lack of the student population, the competition for cartoon admission is intensifying. However, college education often maintains curriculums that do not relate to the on-site demands. Cartoon education in the past was mostly carried out through apprenticeship programs. However such programs began to disappear as college education became more common and as people embraced the emergence of webtoons. Instead collective education and author debut programs replaced the old system. Individualization of education is exacerbating as digital writing tools allow individual webtoonists to publish their works on a weekly basis. The background of the growth of webtoon education can obviously be explained by the growth of the market but there are aspects that can't be explained in such a simple manner. This study examines the current webtoon education status and discusses possible methodological and formation development measures for the future. The introduction examines the change in education and market. The main subject examines the current secondary schools and universities cartoon education and conducts a comprehensive study on the various education related changes. This study proposes future directions for universities by looking at the webtoon era and education changes in the conclusion. It also researched how the units of college cartoon education will fuse and deduct practical results via government policies.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.51
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• pp.181-201
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• 2018

The cartoon industry in Korea has continued to decline due to the contraction of published comics market and decrease in the number of comic books rental stores until the 2000s when it rapidly started to experience qualitative changes and quantitative growth due to the emergence of webtoon. The market size of webtoon industry, valued at 420 billion won in 2015, is expected to grow to 880.5 billion won by 2018. Notably, most cartoonists who draw cartoon strips are using digital devices and producing scripts in data, thereby overcoming the geographical, spatial and physical limitation of contents. As a result, a favorable environment for the creation of local ecosystems is generated. While the infrastructures of human resources are steadily growing by region, cartoon industries that are supported by the government policy have shown good performance combined with factors of creative infrastructures in local areas such as webtoon experience centers, webtoon campuses and webtoon creation centers, etc. Nevertheless, it is true that cartoon infrastructures are substantially based on a capital area which leads to an imbalanced structure of cartoon industry. To see the statistics, companies of offline cartoon business in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province make up 87%, except for distribution industry. In addition, companies of online cartoon business which are situated outside of Seoul and Gyeonggi Province form merely 7.5%. Studies and research on local webtoon are inadequate. The existing studies on local webtoon usually focus on its industrial and economic values, mentioning the word "local" only sometimes. Therefore, this study looked into the current status of local webtoon of the present time for the current state of local cartoon ecosystem, middle and long-term support from the government, and an alternative in the future. Main challenges include the expansion of opportunities to enjoy cartoon cultures, the independence of cartoon infrastructure, and the settlement of regionally specialized cartoon cultures. It means that, in order to enable the cartoon ecosystem to settle down in local areas, it is vital to utilize and link basic infrastructures. Furthermore, it is necessary to consider independence and autonomy beyond the limited support by the government. Finally, webtoon should be designated as a culture, which can be a new direction of the development of local webtoon. Furthermore, desirable models should be continuously researched and studied, which are suitable for each region and connect them with regional tourism, culture and art industry. It will allow the webtoon industry to soft land in the industry. Local webtoon, which is a growth engine of regions and main contents of the fourth industrial revolution, is expected to be a momentum for the decentralization of power and reindustrialization of regions.