LINE Webtoon - The Introduction and History
Naver Webtoon, or know internationally as LINE Webtoon is a webcomic publishing site for digital comics. Started initially in South Korea by Naver Corporation, it has become a very famous site for digital Korean manhwas (Korean comics, similar to Japanese manga).
Since it's release in 2004 it has expanded to cater to the rest of the world, through LINE with the International English site of LINE Webtoon which any of us can use to read digital comics.
Because these are digital comics, the panel format of these manwhas is a bit different from a
traditional book format, since the comic is intended to be read by scrolling down instead. This was because when the founder of the app, JunKoo Kim, wanted to save the manhwa industry from completely disappearing after the industry crashed in the late 1990s and early 2000s; he had to make the format a bit different and unique, so it would fit the busy lifestyle of the average Korean citizen, with easy access to comics on their devices.
Now over time, digital comics and manhwas have become immensely popular, even worldwide,
especially after the English app released internationally in 2014, with the translated version of
Korea's most popular comics across all sorts of genres to become accessible to English
speakers.
With popular and well-known titles, such as "Tower of God", "The God of Highschool", which both got their anime adaptations by Telecom Animation Film and MAPPA respectively in 2020; and the hit webcomic ‘True Beauty’, that got it's own K-Drama just this winter in 2020, the Korean manhwa and webcomic business is booming. And these are only the major hits.
On the LINE Webtoon app, multiple official translated versions of many of Korea’s webcomics are
becoming available and more accessible to be read, along with the hundreds of Webtoon official
international comics are also being published along with the Korean works. This allows people
from all over the world to be able to publish their webcomics on Webtoon.
One of the ways, an average person can have their comic be published, is by taking part in the
annual contest Webtoon has on their app, to have your work selected for official publication. Or
by having your comic be chosen to become a Webtoon Original after a Webtoon editor sees
and likes your work when you post it on Webtoon Canvas, a separate part of Webtoon where
you can publish comics to be read by everyone. Except this will not be an official Webtoon
Original comic; so it won't be promoted by the app like the Originals. But this allows everyone
one to get a chance to have a go at being able to publish their stories to be read on the internet,
and who knows? You might get selected to actually make it in.
Comics, especially digital comics, is becoming a lot more popular, with the recent rise in
popularity for anime and manga from Japan and the more recent rise of the Korean-Pop and
idol industry internationally; reading stories through the form of webcomics on your devices are
becoming a much more convenient option of the average person to keep up to date with your
favourite story.
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