Webtoon (웹툰) is a good companion for many Koreans to be with when they commute. They are web-based comic strips that are produced and consumed on the Internet. You can read various kinds of webtoons with your smartphones for free. Naver and Daum offers webtoon service through PC and smartphone application. Daily featured free webtoons of many popular cartoonists are uploaded every day. I am also a big fan of them, but I couldn’t recommend them to my foreign friends because I thought they were all written in Korean. Recently, however, I found a perfect website for foreigners to enjoy Korean webtoons: Line Webtoon.
Line Webtoon is a website that offers translated versions of Naver webtoons. There are about 130 free webtoon series including completed ones that already turned into paid contents in Korean websites. Official translation only supports English and Chinese, but for some popular series, fans translated in languages such as Spanish, German, Thai and Italian. There are also kind annotations on some pure Korean words. It provides Android and iOS app and you can easily start by your Line, Facebook, or Twitter accounts.
I’d like to recommend you three webtoon series. They were selected according to personal preference, but they all have good ratings in both the Korean website and Line Webtoon. So they would be great series for you if it’s your first time reading Korean webtoons.
Tower of God, Fantasy
is a story of a boy with extraordinary talent who accidently enters an unknown tower to follow his love. The strongest point of this cartoon is its compelling story line, which might make you find yourself reading it overnight. As you follow the boy’s adventure to go up the tower, you can see the unexpected twist in the story and feel how the whole story is well organized by the cartoonist from its starting point. Also, its characters all have distinctive features, which make the story much more natural and let the readers sympathize with their feelings. Many fans find these characters’ different styles and personality very attractive, so they even write novels and draw paintings about these characters and post them on its fan café.
Cheese in the Trap, Romance
So called ‘Chi-in-teu’, it’s one of the top Thursday webtoons. It’s a romance story set in a university campus, which was started in 2010 and is still ongoing. It has gained popularity with its high quality story line and sophisticated drawing style. The story of an average college student brings forth empathy for her life in you. The love story with two male characters is also an appealing point of this cartoon. Due to its popularity, it’ll be remade into a drama so try watching it later.
About Death, Drama
While the two series above were for fun and entertainment, is a webtoon that lets you think deeply about death and our lives. It is a completed series with 22 episodes about dead people telling their story at the borderline between life and death. Each episode makes you contemplate about finite and somewhat vain human life. The best episode is the one about a firefighter and a baby who dies in a fire. It has a dramatic twist at the end and leaves an important message to us.
Article by Wonji from Korea
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