SEOUL, July 12 (Korea Bizwire) — Visual storytelling skills are essential to become a professional webtoon artist, but advancing artificial intelligence (AI) technology is now capable of creating images and text, and challenging the industry in a fundamental way. Webtoons, a type of digital comics read on smartphones, tablets and PCs, have emerged as a [...]
SEOUL, June 1 (Korea Bizwire) — Amidst controversy surrounding Naver Webtoon’s recent utilization of artificially intelligence (AI)-generated works, its main competitor is garnering attention by hosting a contest that appears to be mindful of this issue. Kakao Webtoon Studio announced that it will a guerrilla contest for six days starting Thursday. The contest explicitly states [...]
SEOUL, May 26 (Korea Bizwire) — “The Hellbound,” the original Korean webtoon on which a popular 2021 Netflix series was adapted from, has been nominated for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, one of the most prestigious awards in the comics industry. “The Hellbound vols 1-2″ by Yeon Sang-ho and Choi Gyu-seok, translated into English [...]
SEOUL, May 25 (Korea Bizwire) — With the emergence of a new era where artificial intelligence (AI) services are capable of both writing and creating illustrations, AI technology is becoming a prominent issue in the webtoon industry. A new comic series released on Naver Webtoon, South Korea’s leading webtoon platform, is suspected to have been [...]
SEOUL, May 18 (Korea Bizwire) — A number of new artificial intelligence (AI) services that enable readers to better enjoy webtoons are being released. Naver Webtoon, South Korea’s leading webtoon platform, recently launched a beta service called Toon Filter on its app. It transforms uploaded photos into artworks created by popular web comic artists. The [...]
SEOUL, May 2 (Korea Bizwire) — Foreign tech giants are entering the webtoon market, indicating a possible paradigm shift in the Korean-dominated industry. Last month, Amazon.com, Inc. launched Amazon Fliptoon, a webtoon service, on the Kindle Store. Additionally, Apple Books, an e-book platform powered by Apple Inc., launched a vertical reading manga column. South Korean [...]
SEOUL, April 13 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean online webtoon service providers recently eased their strict criteria, releasing a wider variety of adult webtoons after sticking to wholesome comics. The number of adult web comics registered on Naver Webtoon stood at 71, of which 16 are currently published in a series, and the share of adults [...]
SEOUL, April 12 (Korea Bizwire) — Web novel readers in South Korea are more likely to pay for content than webtoon readers, with the former group spending more on content on a monthly basis compared to the latter group, a survey showed Tuesday. According to a survey of 2,500 Koreans aged 15 to 49 conducted [...]
SEOUL, March 1 (Korea Bizwire) — Naver Webtoon, an online platform for digital comics run by South Korea’s leading portal operator Naver, on Tuesday unveiled new technology that converts photos and videos into webtoon-style images on a real-time basis. During developer conference DEVIEW 2023 held at COEX in Seoul on the same day, Naver developers [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — Webtoon artists in South Korea are far more exposed to the risk of mental illness as they struggle with an excessive workload, a survey showed Wednesday. Dr. Min Ji-hee at Hanyang University Hospital conducted a survey of 320 webtoon artists making more than 500,000 won (US$390) in monthly income [...]