The Korea Contents Agency, in partnership with Internet portal company Naver, set up a webtoon booth in the Frankfurt Book Fair held between October 9 and 13. (image: Frankfurt Book Fair)
SEOUL, Korea, Oct 21 (Korea Bizwire) – “Webtoons,” animated comic strips distributed through the web, have been getting increasing attention by Korea’s content makers as a promising future source of income. Some of the webtoon contents were already exported to overseas publishers. The Korea Contents Agency, in partnership with Internet portal company Naver, set up a webtoon booth in the Frankfurt Book Fair held between October 9 and 13. During the five-day period, as many as 20,000 visitors came to the booth, including publishing house executives and managers from France, Germany, Taiwan, and others, with publication rights discussions on more than 30 webtoon titles available on Naver.
Most of the publishing industry people who visited the booth were amazed that there are Korean-made webtoon titles with more than 3 million readers for each episode. The titles that have attracted most attention during the book fair included “Noblesse,” “Tower of God,” and “God of High School.” The amateur authors of these three titles have become famous through a Naver-sponsored event called “Naver Cartoon Challenge.”
As some of the webtoon contents have been used as sources for movie scripts, dramas, and video games, the future prospect of webtoons is brighter than ever before. According to a recent report by KT Economics Research Institute, Korea’s cartoon market is estimated at 715 billion won, of which that for webtoons accounts for about 14 percent, or 100 billion won, as of 2012. The report said that the webtoon market is forecast to grow to 295 billion won by 2015 from 150 billion won this year and 210 billion won in 2014.
Korea’s cartoon market is estimated at 715 billion won, of which that for webtoons accounts for about 14 percent, or 100 billion won, as of 2012. (image: daum webtoon)
For example, the movies based on storylines of Kang Full, one of the most popular webtoon authors, including “26 Years” and “Neighbor,” attracted 3 million and 2.4 million moviegoers, respectively. Other webtoon-based films such as “Apartment,” “Moss,” “Late Blossom,” “Ba:Bo,” “Hello, Schoolgirl,” “Flower Boys Next Door” were considered box-office successes. The percentage of webtoon-based movies during the first half of this year was 14.4 percent from last year’s 4.7 percent, in terms of moviegoer numbers. Currently ten movies whose scripts are based on webtoons are waiting on the line to be released, including “With the Gods,” “Bathhouse God,” “The Five,” “Trace,” “Dieter,” and “Murderer Toy.”
To take advantage of the trend, private-public alliances have been created to nurture new webtoon authors, manage webtoon copyright rights, and expand marketing activities through webtoons. For example, Everland, the webtoon ecosystem with more than 730,000 members on Facebook, 300,000 on Twitter, 350,000 on KakaoStory, and 1.6 million on Weibo, is currently conducting an “Ever-Toon” Marketing event that turns stories posted by members into webtoon contents. Another company SK Planet has recently started releasing amateur-created webtoons on mobile content marketplace T Store.
There are also companies that use webtoons as a marketing tool. Hanwha Chemical has kicked off a webtoon series “God of Annual Salary” from July this year. It features a protagonist who was hired by Hanwha Chemical accidentally through clerical errors. Although the cartoon series was created by the company in order to promote the fact that the petrochemical industry is a dynamic, technically intensive business, it has been received very well by viewers, with the average viewers’ score of 9.9 out of 10.0.
Game makers are also actively using webtoons in their marketing and content development efforts. For instance, “Dungeon Striker,” a game developed by Identity Games and serviced by Hangame, has attracted high popularity thanks to the similarly-themed webtoon “Man vs. Dungeon” by Lee Mal-nyun. “Kritika,” the role-playing game introduced by All-M, has also gained public recognition through the joint marketing effort with a webtoon “Chooooo… Action School” by Hyun Yong-min.
As the income flowing from character sales is directly proportional to the amount sold on the market, webtoon authors are beginning to consider the market as a great source of steady income. (image: wisdomhouse)
The market for characters, including stickers, mobile messenger icons, and the like, is something not to be looked down on as a child play. As the income flowing from character sales is directly proportional to the amount sold on the market, webtoon authors are beginning to consider the market as a great source of steady income. For example, the emoticon service on KakaoTalk launched in December 2012 has logged in 130 million downloads in eight months, surpassing the sales revenue of 130 billion won. According to Naver, the search engine responsible for more than 80 percent of all webtoon series, emoticons of characters by as many as 30 Naver webtoon authors are currently on sale. In addition, its mobile messenger app Line is also selling character emoticons by 15 or so webtoon creators.
The webtoon industry of Korea has been 11 years since its birth in 2002. In the beginning, Naver webtoon pages carried only five titles with only 8,000 visitors a day. But now that number has risen to 7 million with more than 150 series updated regularly. Since the late 1990s, the print-based cartoon industry has declined steadily. But now it is being transformed into a new promising money-making business thanks to the development of the Internet and mobile communications. It remains to be seen how the webtoon industry will fare in the coming years, but it is clear that the industry has established itself as a full-fledged business with no ignominy attached to cartoon creators and readers alike.
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