Webtoons: features, history and development factors

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Abstract

South Korea's media culture is becoming increasingly recognizable and popular with a global audience. The article examines the main elements of the "Korean wave": dramas, digital South Korean comics (webtoons), the K-pop music genre, the Naver Webtoon media platform. The features, reasons for popularity, history of development, and problems of the South Korean digital comics industry are analyzed. The interaction of Russian and South Korean publishers and representatives of the e-book market is analyzed, and the tendency of Russian publishers to produce printed formats of South Korean webtoons is revealed. The most popular webtoons among the Russian audience are identified, their thematic focus is analyzed. As a result of the research, webtoons can be called a global cultural phenomenon of our time, uniting millennials and zoomers around the world.

About the authors

M. E Utina

Peoples' Friendship University of Russia named after Patrice Lumumba

Email: m.utina@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0009-0000-3409-4701

A. E Bazanova

Peoples' Friendship University of Russia named after Patrice Lumumba

Email: bazanova_ae@pfur.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-5560-5953

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