Do you know Kang Do-ha (Kang Full), Yang Young-soon, or Jo Seok? These people are fascinating netizens with cartoons on the Internet. Many people read comics in the past. Comics were one of the entertainments that people felt interest in and got rid of tedious hours with. Nowadays, cartoons are more popular than comics with people from teenagers to people in their thirties. A cartoon is a short caricature that criticizes or satirizes people or society. We can read these cartoons on Internet portal sites. We call these webtoons.

People are interested in webtoons because they are free and they have various subject matters. The other advantage is that webtoons are online. They allow quicker updating than comics, and the cartoonists can communicate with netizens and receive feedback immediately. Their funny replies and comments also make more people read the webtoons.

Most portal sites have places to update webtoons. They usually update webtoons two to four times a week. The most popular stories are published in a series by professional writers. However, not only professionals but also amateurs can get chances to write webtoon series because cartoons can be written without expert knowledge.

Webtoons’ great advantage is harmony of various genres. One of the examples is music cartoons. Music cartoons are similar to music videos. They are cartoons suited to music. While music videos are moving pictures usually made by experts with commercial purposes, music cartoons are still cuts usually made by non-experts. Music cartoons were popularized by Oculus (Jo Sang-young), an ordinary university student. He drew a music cartoon for his favorite music, Queen’s song “Spread Your Eyes,” to introduce the song to his friend. The detailed sketches of the cartoon go well with the tone and rhythm of the music. People have been deeply impressed with Oculus’ drawing. Now, we can enjoy various reinterpretations and appreciation of music with music cartoons, such as humorous and merry expressions of heartbreaking songs.Lately, movies have been made from webtoons. In 2006, Apartment was released, and now another movie, Babo, is ready for release. Cartoons are expanding into plays, musicals, offline comic books, and television serial dramas, for example, Kang Full’s Sunjeong Comic, Watangka, V, and Great Catsby. With increasing popularity, some webtoon writers have jumped to stardom and have regular meetings with their fans. The number of visitors to webtoon writer Jo Seok’s blog is over 3.5 million. They are celebrities like top stars.

Now, as the webtoon market gets bigger, the webtoon character industry is getting dynamic. One of the top webtoon character companies, Kim’s Licensing Co., Ltd., has developed character merchandising with their webtoon Marine Blues. If you search for “Marine Blues” on the online shopping mall G-market, you can find over 440 items.

However, webtoons sometimes bring about some problems. We don’t have any regulations to prevent children from reading violent and lascivious webtoons. The pages don’t even ask for log-on with identity verification. Additionally, reckless copying without any permission from the copyright owner causes a serious copyright problem.

Webtoons are spread by the Internet, which is the most effective and rapid advertizing medium. It means webtoons have bright prospects. Webtoons have become a new cultural trend. If we are more interested in them, they may develop into a valuable industry.