Naver Webtoon Sweeps Korea Content Awards in Comics Category

Naver Webtoon’s "Antique Shop of the Future (Gu Ajin)," which won the Presidential Award at the 2022 Korea Content Awards.

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Naver Webtoon announced on the 14th that it won 3 out of 5 awards in the comics category at the ‘2022 Korea Content Awards’ ceremony. Naver Webtoon has achieved the record of winning the Presidential Award, the grand prize, consecutively from 2016 to this year.

Now in its 14th year, the Korea Content Awards is the most prestigious content awards ceremony in Korea, hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and organized by the Korea Creative Content Agency.

The works that won the Presidential Award in the comics category, 'Future Antique Shop (Gu Ajin)', and the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Awards winners 'No Home (Wanan)' and 'Return of the Volcano (LICO/Biga)' are all serialized on Naver Webtoon. In the animation category, the animation of the same name based on Naver Webtoon's 'My Daughter Who Became a Zombie (Lee Yunchang)' also won the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Award, proving the artistic quality and value as original intellectual property (IP).

Naver Webtoon's works also stood out at overseas comics awards.

The English original webtoon 'Lore Olympus (Rachel Smythe)', discovered by Naver Webtoon, achieved a triple crown this year at major U.S. comics awards including the Will Eisner Award, Harvey Award, and Ringo Award.

'The Knife (Choi Kyuseok)', serialized on Naver Webtoon from December 2013 to August 2017, became the first webtoon-based book to be nominated in the official competition category at the Angoul?me International Comics Festival, the largest comics festival in Europe held in France.

The official competition works at the Angoul?me International Comics Festival are carefully selected as nominees from about 1% of comics officially published in France the previous year. In particular, the nomination of a book based on a webtoon for the first time in France demonstrated the changed status of webtoons.

At the 50th Angoul?me International Comics Festival, 46 works were selected as official competition works, and the final winners will be announced on January 28 next year, when the event is held.

Lee Junggeun, Naver Webtoon’s Korean Webtoon Leader, said, “I sincerely congratulate all the awarded creators,” and added, “We will continue to discover diverse and new works that combine popularity and artistic quality, striving to become the story tech platform that creators and users worldwide seek first.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.