Webtoons are comics posted online that are read by scrolling down the screen. You might have experiences of being surprised that many of the dramas you enjoyed watching turned out to be based on a webtoon or web novel. Many Webtoon-based dramas have aired in Korea over the past few years, and the number has been remarkably increasing. The drama 'Misaeng: Incomplete Life', which exceeded 10% of viewer ratings, is based on a popular webtoon <Misaeng>, written by a Korean webtoonist Yoon Tae-ho. This drama received great love from audiences in 2014. Since then, many dramas have been made based on webtoons, such as 'Cheese in the Trap', which aired in 2016. However, starting from ‘Itaewon Class’, which aired in 2020, and demonstrated its popularity after many people visited the filming sites of the drama, to the drama 'Tomorrow' broadcasted in 2021, the number of webtoons remade as a drama has increased rapidly. Even now, webtoon-based movies and dramas are spreading overseas through OTT platforms such as Netflix. The drama 'Sweet Home', which aired in 2020, is an example. Let's find out why there are so many dramas and movies based on webtoons and their influences with CAH.

Reasons Why Webtoons Are Made into Dramas

The High Possibility of Success of an Already Proven Work

Most of the original webtoons or web novels that are made into dramas or movies are highly successful works with many views. Dramatizing works with an already attractive story and characters that have been shown to the public guarantee more success than other newly created scenarios. Also, it can be seen that the webtoon market is growing faster than any other entertainment market. According to a survey conducted by the Korea Creative Content Agency of 3,000 people aged 10 to 59, the number of responses that indicate the increase in the use of webtoons, after COVID-19, was 640 billion won, up 37.3%, or 172.7 billion won, from last year. In addition, between 2020 and 2022, 43 webtoon companies said that their domestic sales increased by 60% and the overseas sales by 70%. In fact, it was confirmed by the Korea Creative Content Agency that the webtoon industry is growing at a rate of about 30% or more every year from 2020. As more and more Koreans, and people around the world, read webtoons, when that original story of a webtoon is remade to a drama, it can easily expect a high possibility of success. In fact, there were many famous works based on the original webtoon storylines, such as 'Misaeng' in 2014, 'What's Wrong with Secretary Kim' and 'My ID is Gangnam Beauty' in 2018, and 'Chosun Rocco - Nokdujeon' in 2019. However, starting with ‘Itaewon Class’ in 2020, Netflix original dramas such as ‘Sweet Home’, ‘D.P.’ and ‘Hellbound’ to drama ‘Nevertheless’ and ‘Taxi Driver’, numerous webtoon-based works began to gain popularity.

Webtoons with Wide Choices

Webtoon platforms have expanded widely due to the investment of many portals and companies recently. Thanks to this environment, there are more webtoons dealing with various interesting subjects than just dramatic scenarios. Webtoons not only produce everyday stories such as those about anxiety and depression of the younger generation, but also produce fantasy stories that are difficult to appear from pure story scenarios in the drama or movie market. For example, the movie ‘Along with the Gods’ gained huge success with over 10 million viewers when it was released in 2017. The story of the film, which is based on a webtoon, tells the story of the hell guardians and the afterlife in an interesting way. The drama 'Navillera', which was released in 2021, is the story of an old man trying ballet, showing the merits of webtoons which don’t follow the cliché and can have unique storylines. The drama and movie market, which have long been plagued by material weariness and lack of original ideas, is trying to find stories through webtoons which already have numerous stories due to their wide platform. Also, for movies and dramas, it is safer to choose a webtoon that has already been completed than investing a lot of money for a brand-new scenario which has the danger of zero profit in the case it gets canceled in the middle of the process of making a drama. Therefore, rather than launching a movie or drama based on a brand-new scenario which makes producers unable to predict the public’s reactions, producers tend to bring the story of a successful webtoon in after seeing the great reaction it got from the audience.

Problems Coming from Making Dramas Out of Webtoons

Difficulties That Come from Excessive Expectations of Original Fans

Does webtoon's advance into screen have only advantages? Obviously, there are downsides as well. First, works that have been chosen to be dramatized or made into a movie with an original story existing, attract people’s attention, especially those who liked the original. However, in the casting process, there is often a lot of controversy. For example, there can be the dramatization of the webtoon 'Cheese in the Trap', which had been popular for six years since 2010. Since there were many fans of the original webtoon, a lot of interest is focused on the casting. In particular, the 'original fans' kept saying that the ”synchronization rate”, which rates how much the image or the story of the drama are similar to the original webtoon, was too inconsistent for celebrities who seem to have been offered the role of the main character 'Hong Seol'. Fans were frustrated and complained to change the actress. In another case, the drama 'Hell of Others', which aired in 2020, killed the original main villain in the second episode and introduced a new villain in the process of adapting the webtoon into a drama, which drew criticism from fans of the original webtoon. Like the two examples above, if the audience is too deeply impressed by the original work, the new drama could be criticized by fans because the already-established image of the webtoon would hinder their immersion. In some cases, a change in the story or image rather than the following the original webtoon exactly creates benefits by making the storyline less cliché. However, the excessive expectations of the original fans can cause difficulties.

Degradation of Pure Creative Story Function

One of the biggest problems with the original webtoon adaptation is that it can reduce the capabilities of making creative stories in the film industry. By only making webtoons with a large fanatic bases there is a possibility that the creativity function of the screenplay industry itself will stagnate. The cultural critic Jeong Duk-hyun suggested that, in order to solve these problems, people should attempt a crossover between pure creative writers and webtoon writers, with the original webtoon author being deeply involved in the drama creation process, and with pure drama writers having the experience of writing webtoons. With this experience, original drama writers can learn to expand their creativity, and the webtoon author can help the film please the original fans. The failure of the drama and the deterioration of pure creativity can be prevented at the same time.

Problems in Rights of Webtoon Workers

In addition to the problems above, the mental and physical exhaustion of webtoonists due to hyper tasking is also a problem. In fact, in a survey of 635 webtoon writers by the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) that made multiple selection possible, 84% suffers from “mental and physical deterioration due to excessive work” and “lack of rest time due to the burden of ending the series” were recorded. In addition, according to the ‘2021 Webtoon Artist Survey Report’ conducted by the KOCCA, about 53% of the total respondents answered that they had experienced an unfair contract. The unfair article in the contracting process is mainly 'contracting a unilaterally advantageous contract with the production company in relation to overseas copyright or secondary copyright', 'not providing the settlement details transparently', and 'contracting with an intermediate company such as an agency or production company'. As such, the dramatization of webtoons causes human rights problems for the webtoonists due to the excessive increase in the workload.

The dramatization of the original webtoon has become a trend in the drama industry. Movies and dramas prefer using webtoon stories rather than new scenarios because the success has already been verified through public reactions. In addition, it was found that the broadcasting systems and the film industries, which were currently trapped in the bridle of boredom of materials, are trying to get out of the slump by using webtoons which have various choices of creative materials based on great support and wide platforms. Of course, there are still problems such as excessive expectations of original fans or concern of lowering the pure creativity of the cinema industry. However, if various solutions to these few problems are devised, harmony between webtoons and TV drama or movies will be achievable.