• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.51
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• pp.225-254
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• 2018

For the domestic web-toon industry, a new industrial environment has been created by the growth various domestic and international factors, such as technology development, the increase of platforms, charged web-toon, and globalization. Although the role of the agency has not been emphasized at the formation and introduction time of the web-toon, the role growth of the agency has been regularized with the expanding of the web-toon industry. The expending web-toon industry is due to the introduction of smart-phone, by which people can consume the web-toon without any limit of time and place, so the web-toon industry has been growing rapidly. Thereafter the production of the second contents using the web-toon IP has been actively carried out and the activity area of the web-toon artist has been diversified, so the necessity of the specialized web-toon agency has begun to be brought in earnest. In this study, the web-toon industry has been, firstly, classified as transition period of cartoon industry, foothold formation period of web-toon, introduction period of web-toon industry, expansion period, and maturity period according to the industrial life cycle theory. As a result, the web-toon agency has been emerged from the expansion period of web-toon industry, and the role of agency, to prevent web-toon industry entering into declining period from its maturity period, has been researched in this study.