• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.67-88
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• 2019

Webtoon is a Korean-style digital comics platform that distributes comics content produced using the characteristic elements of the Internet in a form that can be consumed online. With the recent rapid growth of the webtoon industry and the exponential increase in the supply of webtoon content, the need for effective webtoon content recommendation measures is growing. Webtoons are digital content products that combine pictorial, literary and digital elements. Therefore, webtoons stimulate consumer sentiment by making readers have fun and engaging and empathizing with the situations in which webtoons are produced. In this context, it can be expected that the sentiment that webtoons evoke to consumers will serve as an important criterion for consumers' choice of webtoons. However, there is a lack of research to improve webtoons' recommendation performance by utilizing consumer sentiment. This study is aimed at developing consumer sentiment pattern maps that can support effective recommendations of webtoon content, focusing on consumer sentiments that have not been fully discussed previously. Metadata and consumer sentiments data were collected for 200 works serviced on the Korean webtoon platform 'Naver Webtoon' to conduct this study. 488 sentiment terms were collected for 127 works, excluding those that did not meet the purpose of the analysis. Next, similar or duplicate terms were combined or abstracted in accordance with the bottom-up approach. As a result, we have built webtoons specialized sentiment-index, which are reduced to a total of 63 emotive adjectives. By performing exploratory factor analysis on the constructed sentiment-index, we have derived three important dimensions for classifying webtoon types. The exploratory factor analysis was performed through the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) using varimax factor rotation. The three dimensions were named 'Immersion', 'Touch' and 'Irritant' respectively. Based on this, K-Means clustering was performed and the entire webtoons were classified into four types. Each type was named 'Snack', 'Drama', 'Irritant', and 'Romance'. For each type of webtoon, we wrote webtoon-sentiment 2-Mode network graphs and looked at the characteristics of the sentiment pattern appearing for each type. In addition, through profiling analysis, we were able to derive meaningful strategic implications for each type of webtoon. First, The 'Snack' cluster is a collection of webtoons that are fast-paced and highly entertaining. Many consumers are interested in these webtoons, but they don't rate them well. Also, consumers mostly use simple expressions of sentiment when talking about these webtoons. Webtoons belonging to 'Snack' are expected to appeal to modern people who want to consume content easily and quickly during short travel time, such as commuting time. Secondly, webtoons belonging to 'Drama' are expected to evoke realistic and everyday sentiments rather than exaggerated and light comic ones. When consumers talk about webtoons belonging to a 'Drama' cluster in online, they are found to express a variety of sentiments. It is appropriate to establish an OSMU(One source multi-use) strategy to extend these webtoons to other content such as movies and TV series. Third, the sentiment pattern map of 'Irritant' shows the sentiments that discourage customer interest by stimulating discomfort. Webtoons that evoke these sentiments are hard to get public attention. Artists should pay attention to these sentiments that cause inconvenience to consumers in creating webtoons. Finally, Webtoons belonging to 'Romance' do not evoke a variety of consumer sentiments, but they are interpreted as touching consumers. They are expected to be consumed as 'healing content' targeted at consumers with high levels of stress or mental fatigue in their lives. The results of this study are meaningful in that it identifies the applicability of consumer sentiment in the areas of recommendation and classification of webtoons, and provides guidelines to help members of webtoons' ecosystem better understand consumers and formulate strategies.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.38
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• pp.177-194
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• 2015

This study that had been conducted two months by a research team of Pusan National University at the request of Korea Manwha Contents Agency in Dec. 2013 is about the statistical analysis on 'Korean Webtoon DB and its Flow Report' which resulted from the complete survey of Korean webtoons which had been published with payment in official media from early 2000 to 2013. Webtoon which means the cartoons published on web has become a typical type of Korean cartoons and has developed into a main industry since 2000s when traditional published cartoons had declined and social environments had changed. Today, it represents cultural contents in Korea. This study collected the webtoons officially published in media with payment, among Korean webtoons having been published from the early 2000s to Jan. Based on the collected data, it analyzed the general characteristics of webtoons, including cartoonists, the number of cartoons, distribution chart of each media, genre, and publication cycle. According to the data analysis and statistics, a great deal of Korean webtoons are still published in main portal websites, but their platform is being diversified and a webtoon's publication cycle tends to be shortened. In terms of genre, traditional popular genres, such as drama, comic, fantasy, and action, are still popular, and the genres of history, sports, and food are on the rise along with a social trend. Regarding webtoon application, such events as relay webtoon and brand webtoon, and a new type of webtoon featuring PPL commercialism appear. Such phenomena can realize the common profits of cartoonists, media, and ordering bodies, and are various trials to test the possibility of webtoons. In addition, what needs to pay attention on in the expansion of webtoons is increasing webtoons for adults. The study subjects are the webtoons published with payment, excluding free webtoons. However, this study failed to collect the webtoons published on the online websites already closed, and the lost information on cartoonists and their lost webtoons, and it is necessary to conduct a complete survey on all webtoons including free ones. Despite the limitations, this study is meaningful in the points that it categorized and analyzed Korean webtoons accoridng to official media, webtoons, cartoonists, and genres and that it provided a fundamental material to understand the current conditions of webtoons. It is expected that this study will be able to contribute to activating more research on webtoons and producing more supplementary data which will be used for the Korean cartoon industry and academia.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.510-520
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• 2020

This study attempts to explore the educational applicability of webtoons. Webtoons have very useful educational elements in educational environments. First, they are extremely popular among learners of the internet age and not only do webtoon images provide immersiveness and enjoyment to learners in class environments based on text but the narrativity and contextuality of webtoons can also provide abundant material in connection with the subject. Also, the interactivity of the Web 2.0, a space where webtoons are circulated, can also be utilized in educational environments. This study attempts to explore grounds for detailed approaches for the educational applicability of webtoons using theoretical and practical methods. It is hoped that through this study, assessments can be made of positive prospects regarding the educational applicability of webtoons.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.33
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• pp.469-502
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• 2013

Webtoons are popularly consumed in Korea. Especially the 'Dailytoons', which are composed of short episodes, are the most popular form of webtoons. This study focuses on the specific narrative structure of the dailytoons, and also tries to figure out what makes webtoons so popular. This study tried to analyze the special features of figures, events, and backgrounds of webtoons. Particularly in webtoons, Korean metropolitan is employed as a background and the daily life of the lower middle class in this big city is importantly used in the story. Each cut of a webtoon consists of simple words and images, and it shows the life of modern people and the way they recognize the reality. The important thing is that the image and the narrative of one cut often appears contradictively. 'Irony' occurs in the process of combination of the words and images. And the life of the lower middle class is depicted 'fun-and-sadly' through irony. For example, the main characters of webtoons are portrayed as persecuted victims because of their lack of information or ignorance. At this point, they are described ridiculously by a play on words. In addition, webtoons often presents twist plots using the scroll bars and margins of 'web' interface. Also it uses parody to show reality in satire. With irony, webtoons represent the daily life of the public, which is cynical as well as humorous. This study tried to suggest that webtoons should attribute its success to 'irony' in its narrative.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.11 no.11
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• pp.39-53
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• 2020

Purpose: With a rapid advance of communication technology, distributional systems of sport contents continue to show improvements. In particular, a traditional framework in creating sport cartoon has been influenced by the environment of the communication industry. Despite the development of distributional systems, the current sport cartoon industry still lacks in advancement. To this day, various research about sport contents have been conducted; yet, not many studies of the interaction between sport cartoons and communication technology have been done. In this respect, this study is to review the distributional environment of the sport cartoon industry and provide distributional strategies for developing sport cartoon industry. Research design, data, and methodology: In addition to in-depth interviews with five practitioners in sport cartoon industry, the study employed case study methodology. Interview data were analyzed by qualitative content analysis. Results: With new environments allowing anyone allowing to create and share webtoons, various genres including sports webtoons appear, and this became amotive to the growth of sports webtoons. Today, sports comics acted as a sports advertisement platform which not only created additional profit but also became an opportunity as a marketing method. On the contrary, the formal attributes of webtoons cause hardship in consistently creating sports webtoons. Hence, it is needed that supporting policies need to be established to nurture sport webtoon expertise. For example, Korea Creative Content Agency allows future webtoon authors to have an opportunity to be educated and equipped in producing creative sport webtoon contents. Moreover, revenue systems should be developed for motivating webtoon authors to involve in sport contents in their works. Conclusions: In order to promote the sports cartoon industry based on the findings, it is first necessary to create sports comics that reflect the formal characteristics of webtoons and the changing consumer environment. Second, it is important to acknowledge the industrial value of sports comics and it is necessary to promote policies regarding sports webtoon production and distribution from a national level. Third, by diversifying profits through OSMU and sports advertisements, it is possible to enhance the work environment and the treatment of authors. Implications and future directions were discussed.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.389-395
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• 2016

Korean cartoons, seeking an exit from economic distress, naturally entered the era of webtoons as the Internet arose in early 2,000s. Webtoons, a new concept of cartoon, are drawn mostly by oneself, whereas cartoons before were drawn with the help of many apprentices. This research demonstrates that webtoon artists are required to use many programs and fully understand the Internet environment in order to draw webtoons. This tough conditions pose many problems for an artist who should draw well and quickly under the circumstances. We are now at a stage where a simple webtoon program is needed and will go over alternatives. I have researched characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of webtoon's core programs such as Photoshop, Comicstudio, Cytool, and Clipstudio, and what would be the optimal functions for webtoons. I offer new programs that are optimized for story cartoons that can be utilized with webtoons.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.48
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• pp.217-247
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• 2017

A brand webtoon is the webtoon to be planned for advertising. It can be appealed like a webtoon, so recently it becomes popular as one of brand storytelling contents. This study looked at the fact that the webcomic artists have released webtoons having apparent style as a series for many years in the online portal site have published multiple brand webtoons. And it analyzed the expression, narrative structure, and character being shared between their webtoon and brand webtoons. Through this analysis, we can look a spin-off phenomenon between their webtoon and brand webtoons. The spin-off phenomenon means a making the other stories basis on character or situation of drama, movie, novel and etc that have already published, like a supplementary story. And we can recognize a spin-off phenomenon in these cases that have the same story style what make an emotion like the genre, concept, world concept, expression style, narrative structure or use the same characters. For this study, It analyzed Kwak baek soo's and 5 brand webtoons including on Naver, Kim yang soo's and 3 brand webtoons on Naver, Kim Jin's and 2 brand webtoons on Naver, and Petermon's and 1 brand webtoon on Daum. And It analyzed how the readers have accepted it through making a comparison between number of recommendations and reply of brand webtoon and the original webtoon in the same esason. This research will be helpful for study about brand webtoon storytelling and also webtoon storytelling through analyzing how the expression and narrative structure of webtoon are adapted to brand webtoon and get likability.

• The Journal of Bigdata
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.173-185
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• 2022

Nowadays, Korean webtoons are leading the global digital comic market. Webtoons are being serviced in various languages around the world, and dramas or movies produced with Webtoons' IP (Intellectual Property Rights) have become a big hit, and more and more webtoons are being visualized. However, with the success of these webtoons, the working environment of webtoon creators is emerging as an important issue. According to the 2021 Cartoon User Survey, webtoon creators spend 10.5 hours a day on creative activities on average. Creators have to draw large amount of pictures every week, and competition among webtoons is getting fiercer, and the amount of paintings that creators have to draw per episode is increasing. Therefore, this study proposes to generate webtoon background images using deep learning algorithms and use them for webtoon production. The main character in webtoon is an area that needs much of the originality of the creator, but the background picture is relatively repetitive and does not require originality, so it can be useful for webtoon production if it can create a background picture similar to the creator's drawing style. Background generation uses CycleGAN, which shows good performance in image-to-image translation, and CartoonGAN, which is specialized in the Cartoon style image generation. This deep learning-based image generation is expected to shorten the working hours of creators in an excessive work environment and contribute to the convergence of webtoons and technologies.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.108-119
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• 2023

Instatoon is a type of webtoons distributed through Instagram, but in the process of advancement of the webtoon industry, it shows the possibility of diversifying into a new genre that meets creativity, and diversity beyond uniform commercial webtoons. Since it does not go through a large platform, the content is freely composed. In addition, it is differentiated from other types of webtoons because in many cases artists create instatoon by adding entertaining elements into their real-life stories rather than drawing fictional ones. Furthermore, instatoons are free to enjoy, satisfaction level is high, but in most cases, even if there is a complaint, readers just enjoy webtoons without expressing it. We aimed to find out how the service quality characteristics of these instatoons affect behavioral intentions through the coexistence of satisfaction and dissatisfaction of readers, and meaninful results were found through empirical analysis. We discusses factors affecting the spread of Instatoons, including readers' satisfaction and dissatisfaction, the importance of relatability, good directing, and informativeness. The study emphasizes the need to approach maintaining existing readers and attracting new ones separately, and to manage readers effectively in the future.

• Journal of Multimedia Information System
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.211-218
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• 2017

Recently, the number of subscribers of the webtoons published by some major internet portal companies and others is increasing and their revenues are continually rising. Accordingly, a number of studies are being conducted for this phenomenon. For the uploaders off webtoons, their works are graded and added up for the promotion review but the criteria of such a promotion system usually fall short of readers' expectations. Although most of the subscribes of webtoons are drawn into subscription mainly by the recommendation of people around them, the responses from the new subscribers were often quite different from what the portal companies have anticipated, affecting the rank of the webtoon. Thus, a promotion management system which provides a reliable and clear method of assessment is proposed in this study including the revenue and copyright management scheme for the cartoonists.