SEOUL, Oct. 4 (Korea Bizwire) – Among the recent popular dramas, from ‘Moving’ to ‘Mask Girl,’ it’s difficult to find ones that are not based on webtoons. The term ‘webtoon original’ has become so common that jokes are being made, suggesting the need for a specific term like ‘drama original.’ Against this backdrop, a recent study [...]
SEOUL, July 14 (Korea Bizwire) — The Character Licensing Fair 2023, South Korea’s largest fair for the character industry, took place at COEX in southern Seoul on Thursday. For the first time ever, a webtoon booth was set up at the fair. The booth, measuring 7 meters in width and 4 meters in height, resembled [...]
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 [...]