K-webtoon enters US college classrooms

South Korea’s webtoons, specialized for smartphones, are spreading overseas to major art classrooms in the U.S. From the webtoon format that originated in South Korea to storytelling, the topics of lectures are also diversifying. As K-webtoon’s overseas expansion has accelerated, the demand for related education has also increased.

According to the webtoon industry on Thursday, the School of Visual Arts (SVA), one of the top three art universities in New York, and Augusta University, a state university in Georgia, have opened a course on vertical scroll webtoons, a format of K-webtoons. Vertical scroll webtoons are comics that can be read while scrolling down, and they are a typical feature of K-webtoons optimized for online platforms, which originated in South Korea.

The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), a prestigious art school in Georgia, also officially introduced a vertical scroll webtoon class last year. Students also actively participate in the school’s K-webtoon club. The school also organizes an annual webtoon production workshop in collaboration with alumni.

Yale University also uses K-webtoons to illustrate South Korea’s storytelling style in its courses on the Korean Wave. Grace Kao, a professor of sociology at Yale, gave an assignment of viewing webtoons in her course “Hallyu: The Korean Wave Through K-Pop and K-Dramas” because she believes that webtoons help students understand South Korea’s culture and sentiment.

The popularity of webtoons in U.S. universities can be attributed to the booming local webtoon ecosystem. South Korean companies such as Naver Webtoon and Kakao Entertainment pioneered the genre. The webtoon “True Beauty,” which has accumulated 6.4 billion global views thanks to its popularity in North America and Japan, will be made into a movie in Japan and released next year.


한종호 기자 hjh@donga.com