SEOUL, Dec. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — Television series based on webtoons are all the rage these days as TV networks battle to attract young viewers. KBS 2TV’s “Feel Good to Die”, tvN’s “Tale of Gyeryong Fairy”, JTBC’s “Clean with Passion for Now”, and Olive’s “Eun Joo’s Room” are all based on webtoons. JTBC’s “My ID [...]
SEOUL, Jul. 30 (Korea Bizwire) — Kakao Corp., the operator of South Korea’s top mobile messenger, KakaoTalk, has joined forces with major talent agency YG Entertainment Inc. to tap deeper into the online comic market in Japan, industry sources said Monday. Although the two firms have not signed official tie-up deals, the collaboration is drawing [...]
SEOUL, March 27 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean webtoon makers are being hit hard by illegal copies, suffering economic damages of over 200 billion won every month. The worrying figure comes from a report from Webtoon Guide citing one website known for sharing illegal copies of South Korean webtoon series, which was submitted to the [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — A winding cartoon mural street in Seoul’s Gangdong Ward has won the 2017 Asian Townscape Award from the Asia-Pacific regional office of the U.N. Human Settlements Program, the ward office said Monday. The street in southeastern Seoul, dubbed the Kang Full Cartoon Alley, is lined with wall paintings bearing [...]
SEOUL, Jul. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — Doh Ga-young and Han Woo-jin consider each other just close friends. But people around them suspect things between them are more than that. The confused young adults slowly get to discover true feelings toward each other. So goes the story in “Something About Us,” a webtoon, or web-based comic [...]
SEOUL, June 27 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean webtoon makers are branching out into foreign markets, with the hopes of expanding their presence and paving the way for up-and-coming cartoonists. NHN Entertainment, which owns the global webtoon platform ‘Comico’, is at the forefront of the international movement, as the company is scheduled to hold a [...]
SEOUL, Jun. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — Unfair contracts and practices are posing a grave threat to the livelihood of cultural artists operating in Seoul, a survey conducted by the metropolitan government said Monday. In the poll of 315 cartoonists and webtoon writers and 519 illustrators from last December to February this year, four of five [...]
SEOUL, May 4 (Korea Bizwire) – The global market for digital animation is expected to grow at an average of 10.8 percent annually to US$1.17 billion in 2020, an industry report said Wednesday. According to the annual report by the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), the global digital cartoon market came to $814 million in 2016, up 15.7 percent from a year earlier. The findings showed digital cartoons accounted for only 4.1 percent of the entire animation industry in 2011 [...]
SEOUL, August 1 (Korea Bizwire) – Use of the intellectual property (IP) of webtoons (online comics) in the gaming industry is becoming increasingly popular. Because the main characters in webtoon series are already familiar to young gamers who often read comics, use of existing characters offers cost-saving benefits when it comes to marketing. Naver and Daum, the [...]
SEOUL, March 14 (Korea Bizwire) – Kakao Corp., the operator of South Korea’s most popular mobile messenger Kakao Talk, said Monday that it has teamed up with a Chinese conglomerate to bring its online webtoons to the rapidly-growing market. Under the deal with Huace Group, one of China’s leading entertainment groups, five of Kakao’s Daum [...]