• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.709-723
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• 2013

This study aims to diagnose the present condition of the Digital comics industry, including the "webtoon", which is receiving attention as the new Korean wave (Hallyu) cultural content, and explore ways to vitalize these contents. Considering the fact that the distribution rate of smart devices in Korea is the highest in the world as of June 2013, and that comics as contents have been known to show the easiest and fastest adaptation to changes in the media, the Digital comics industry is certainly an area with high expected growth, but its actual size of the industry shows a very low growth rate compared to other digital contents. This study analyzes the present condition of the Digital comics industry through theoretical and precedent study, and deducts 7 major factors that inhibit the growth of Digital comics industry by summing up the industry structure through making surveys of major businesses in the industry. Further, problems and possible solutions of the digital comics industry are discussed through in-depth interviews with total 10 digital comics industry experts. Building a ecosystem based charged service, realizing a total management system, government support and improvements on restrictions are discussed as solutions to a sustained growth of the Digital comics industry.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartD
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• v.10D no.7
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• pp.1213-1224
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• 2003

In recently, digital comic content distribution was not stable for illegal distribution and the weak of intellectual property right in the internet. The research activities of suggest the distribution model and secure intellectual property right are going in international standard communities, not yet in Korea. As the basis of the research, the general framework of international projects and standards such as MPEG-21, IMPREMATUR, FILIGRANE was analysed. Targeting on the domain of digital comics industry, the digital comics distribution structure and business flow model are defined adapting secured distribution system, DRM. The detail content of this research consist of three themes. The first, survey and analysis of the international standard ＆ leading DRM project's models. The second, suggestion of the service scenario on the digital comic content distribution. The third, suggestion of the model on the secured distribution of digital comics. Through this research targeting at the digital comics business, we found that standards technical items and requirements was well adapted into target domain, and would affect other domain in digital content industry.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.51
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• pp.159-179
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• 2018

As digital media evolves, image changes have evolved from 2D to 3D. At the end of the 1930s when the US overcame the economic crisis and met the Second World War, people needed a hero to escape reality. In DC (Detective Comics), superhero comics started to become popular by making superhero series mainly with Super Man and Bat Man. Timely Comics, founded by Martin Goodman in 1939, also published Marvel Comics, the first comic strip in epochal comics on October 1 of the same year. From this point on, Marble has developed mainly in the cartoon industry. However, in the development of the times and the change of media, Marble boldly grasps the influence of Hollywood movies from the comic centered development system, and moves from the cartoon market to the movie market. Especially, the trans-media storytelling strategy was well reflected in the movie "Avengers" series, which Marvel produced after the merger with Disney. In this paper, When Marble Comics compares with the time when the comic book industry developed before the merger and the time when the movie industry was focused after the merger with Disney What kind of change and development, and The purpose of this study is to investigate the causes of these changes.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.9
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• pp.33-58
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• 2005

This study is to create and develop Korean cartoon & animation through the comparative study on those activities in Korea, America & Japan. Three countries advance highly in the art creation and industry development of their cartoon & animation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to compare and analyze the following activities related to the education ${\cdot}$ art ${\cdot}$ culture ${\cdot}$ industry of their cartoon & animation; 1) The education of their cartoon & animation is deeply specified in the establishment of department, composition of curriculum, and research & development. 2) The art of their cartoon & animation is widely diversified in the art creation of cartoon & comics, vanguard experiment of animation, and awarding system. 3) The culture of their cartoon & animation is clearly distinguished in the setup of organizations, expansion of cultural facilities, and festival events. 4) The industry of their cartoon & animation makes ultramodern contents of cartoon & comics, film digitizing of animation, and brand merchandising of characters. Finally, we must research and develop the ${\ll}$digital cartoon, webtoon, and mobile animation${\gg}$ in Korea.

• 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.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.35
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• pp.209-226
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• 2014

Chinese cartoon industry lately was able to see a rapid development which changed cartoon creative personnel associated with increased production technology development, new technologies, government support policy and a variety of environments. It was likely to have high expectations for changes in the policy environment of the country supported the comic creators and authors to develop its own comic industry. The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of China promoted the production for the development of Chinese animation with "domestic little video about the development of the animation industry's opinion", and "documents Documents". Animation industrial base and animation education was established in institutions such as the organization one after another. In the meantime, the spread of Japanese comics picture on the creative activation admitted but their comic creation and activation was slump. It would produce that the creation of its traditional culture based activation strategy to built comics. Since 2004, It was well represented for the creators of the cartoon creation of the tradition and uniqueness of Chinese history. In the prior to 2004, comics and strategies was to be differentiated. Today, China is an important source of comic marked the fact that the tradition was recognized and it was further developed with combining creativity of the past and the present production system. Comic creators comic story of traditional culture were excavated in order to have a sense of awareness and modern. The difference between China Cartoon and comics in other Asian countries is true that cartoon story came out naturally in a traditional culture. In this study, It would lead in the future to allow directional presented for the digital cartoon making development policy awareness through the comic creation and production of new media content industry enabled to China. Now, in the new media industry for the development of China's neighboring countries coped with climate change for the active exchange of information. It poured out ceaseless technical development and a range of policies to support business expansion. New China Cartoon was leaped to re-fit the industry.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.172-180
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• 2024

Background: Webtoon, a digital form of comics created in the Republic of Korea, has spread widely with advantages that anyone can become a cartoonist and that autonomy of creation is guaranteed. The purpose of this study is to identify the working conditions of webtoon writers and analyze the relationship between these conditions and depressive symptoms. Methods: A survey was carried out on webtoon writers and a survey data of 312 webtoon writers were analyzed. The questionnaire included basic socio-demographic characteristics, webtoon writers' contractual type, fields of activity (webtoon creator, story writer, illustrator), and working environment (labor discretion etc.). We investigated depressive symptoms and analyzed its relation to the work environment of webtoon writers. Results: Webtoon writers were exposed to long working hours, high labor intensity, limited labor discretion, negative comments from readers, and had a high prevalence of depressive symptoms. Compared to story writers who contracted directly with platforms, story writers and the illustrators who contracted with content providers (CPs) were 9.51 times (OR = 9.51, 95% CI = 1.47 - 61.33) and 6.47 times (OR = 6.47, 95% CI = 1.08 - 38.75) more likely to have depressive symptoms, respectively. Conclusions: This study emphasizes the urgent necessity to improve the overall working environment in the webtoon industry and implement measures to tackle the escalating mental health challenges faced by illustrators and story writers contracted with CPs, especially given the increasing popularity of novel comics.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.28
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• pp.1-25
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• 2012

The rapid digitalization across all aspects of society since 1990 led to the digitalization of cartoons. As the medium of cartoons moved from paper to the web, a powerful visual culture emerged. An encounter between cartoons and multimedia technologies has helped cartoons evolve into a video culture. Today cartoons are no longer literate culture. It is critical to pay attention to cartoons as an "expanded fest" and as visual and video culture with much broader significance. In this paper, the investigator set out to diagnose the current position of cartoons changing in the rapidly changing digital age and talk about future directions that they should pursue. Thus she discussed cases of changes from 1990 when colleges began to provide specialized education for cartoons and animation to the present day when cartoon and Multimedia Comics fests exist in addition to the digitalization of cartoons. The encounter between new technologies and cartoons broke down the conventional forms of cartoons. The massive appearance of artists that made active use of new technologies in their works, in particular, has facilitated changes to the content and forms of cartoons and the expansion of character uses. The development of high technologies extends influence to the roles of appreciators beyond the artists' works. Today readers voice their opinions about works actively, build a fan base, promote the works and artists they favor, and help them rise to stardom. As artist groups of various genres were formed, the possibilities of new stories and texts and the appearance of diverse styles and world views have expanded the essence of cartoon texts and the overall cartoon system of cartoon culture, industry, education, institution, and technology. It is expected that cartoons and Multimedia Comics will continue to make a contribution as a messenger to reflect the next generation of culture, mediate it, and communicate with it. Today there is no longer a distinction between print and video cartoons. Cartoons will expand in every field through a wide range of forms and styles, given the current situations involving installation concept cartoons, blockbuster digital videos, fancy items, and characters at theme parks based on a narrative. It is therefore necessary to diversify cartoon and Multimedia Comics education in diverse ways. Today educators are faced with a task to bring up future generations of talents who are capable of leading the culture of overall senses based on literate and video culture by incorporating humanities, social studies, and new technology education into their creative artistic abilities.

• 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.

• 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.