From Page to Screen
Korean Webtoons and Manhwa
Course 1 · Chapter 6 · From Page to Screen
A webtoon can be the start of another work: a drama, a film, a game or a printed book. This chapter follows those paths using the Wikipedia articles that document them, and then looks at the claims that come with them, such as "most watched", "revitalised" and "first". It also notes the traffic in the other direction, because platforms now adapt other media into webtoons too.
Webtoons Into Screen Works
The Webtoon article calls Tazza "one of the earliest examples" of a comic used as source material. Chapter 2 met it as a print-era serial; the article says it became a 2006 film, Tazza: The High Rollers, and was "later adapted into two films... and one television series". The more recent adaptations in the table below come from the articles on the series.
| Series | What the article says about the source and release |
|---|---|
| Misaeng: Incomplete Life | A 2014 television series on tvN (17 October to 20 December 2014), "based on the eponymous webtoon series by Yoon Tae-ho". It "became a cultural phenomenon". An earlier film, Incomplete Life: Prequel, came in 2013. |
| Sweet Home | A Netflix series released 18 December 2020, from the webtoon that ran 2017–2020 (Chapter 5). |
| Itaewon Class | A 2020 series "based on the webtoon of the same name", aired on JTBC from 31 January to 21 March 2020 and streaming on Netflix. It was "the first series to be produced by the film distribution company Showbox" and won Best Drama Series at the 25th Asian Television Awards. |
| Yumi's Cells | A 2021 series, with three seasons by 2026, announced as sold to "more than 160 countries" (Chapter 5). |
| Hellbound | A supernatural thriller series "written and directed by Yeon Sang-ho with Choi Gyu-seok, based on their own webtoon". It premiered at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival and was released on Netflix on 19 November 2021. |
| All of Us Are Dead | A zombie series "based on the webtoon... by Joo Dong-geun, which was published on Webtoon between 2009 and 2011". Netflix release on 28 January 2022. |
| Moving | A 2023 series "written by Kang Full", "based on the eponymous Kakao webtoon by Kang". Released from 9 August to 20 September 2023. |
How the Success Is Described
| Series | Claim | Whose, and what is odd |
|---|---|---|
| All of Us Are Dead | "Watched over 474.26 million hours in its first 30 days" on Netflix. | Hours viewed, not viewers; the figure's owner is not named in the passage I read. |
| Hellbound | "Became the world's most-watched Netflix series the next day, surpassing Squid Game." | A claim about one day and one measure; the article adds that critics said it "followed in the footsteps of Squid Game". |
| Moving | "After seven days of availability, it became the most watched Korean original series on Disney+ globally and Hulu in the United States, based on hours streamed." The article adds that its success "is said to have revitalized" Disney+. | Hours streamed on named services in a named window; "is said to have" marks an unattributed claim. |
| Itaewon Class | "Won Best Drama Series at the 25th Asian Television Awards." | An award, which is a fact about a judging panel, not about audience size. |
Each claim is true in its own terms and uses a different yardstick: hours watched, a day's ranking, a seven-day window, an award. None says how many people read the webtoon, and none shows that the adaptation raised the webtoon's readership. Neither does any of the articles I read give a reader or platform view of whether adaptations changed the industry, so that part of the outline, how adaptation shaped the business, rests on one number only: JunKoo Kim's 2014 statement, as the platform article gives it, that "a total of 189 books, videos, and games based on Naver webtoons have either been produced or are in the process of being made".
The Other Direction
The platform article's "Other media into webtoons" list shows adaptation running the other way too: young-adult novels, Korean web novels such as The Remarried Empress, a 2018 film (On Your Wedding Day) to be adapted as a webtoon, and webtoons based on TV series such as Our Beloved Summer (a prequel about the characters' high-school days) and Extraordinary Attorney Woo. It also lists webtoons of Western properties, with Batman: Wayne Family Adventures (from September 2021) and Eternals: The 500 Year War (20 January 2022). The article says nothing about why a platform chooses a given property.
Back to Paper
The same section lists print: Space Boy from Dark Horse Books, Lore Olympus from Random House Worlds, and imprints such as Ize Press, Rocketship Entertainment and Webtoon Unscrolled. It says three volumes of the Lore Olympus print edition "all reach[ed] No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list". In Korea, the Tower of God and True Beauty articles mention print editions by Young Com. So the path from page to screen sometimes loops back to the page.
What the Sources Don't Say
- Why webtoons are adapted so often. Fans and commentators often point to a ready-made story and audience, but no source I read states this, so I leave it as a guess.
- Who owns the rights to an adaptation, and what the creator earns from it. The platform article mentions an "IP business" (Chapter 3) and no more.
- How faithful any adaptation is to its source, or how readers received the change.
Reading a Claim About an Adaptation
- What is the yardstick? Hours, viewers, ratings, rankings and awards are different measures.
- What is the window? "Next day", "seven days" and "30 days" are not comparable.
- Who says? A streaming service, a critic, an article's "is said to".
- Is it about the screen or the page? A hit series does not by itself show anything about the webtoon's readers.
- Which direction? Check whether a work started as a webtoon or became one.
Exercises
Choose three series from the table and give, for each, the platform or channel, the date and the source webtoon as the article gives them. Then say which series' creators also wrote the adaptation, according to the articles.
Compare the success claims for All of Us Are Dead, Hellbound and Moving. For each, say what is measured, over what period, and what the claim cannot tell you.
Give two examples of adaptation running into webtoons, and two examples of webtoons going to print. Then say why the chapter does not claim that adaptation "changed the industry".
Quick Reference
- Early example: Tazza, 2006 film, from a newspaper serial
- Screen: Misaeng (2014), Sweet Home (2020), Itaewon Class (2020), Yumi's Cells (2021), Hellbound (2021), All of Us Are Dead (2022), Moving (2023)
- Claims: 474.26 million hours in 30 days; "most-watched" on one day; "most watched Korean original" on Disney+ in seven days; "is said to have revitalized" Disney+
- Industry figure: 189 books, videos and games from Naver webtoons (JunKoo Kim, 2014)
- Other direction: novels, dramas and Western comics turned into webtoons
- Print: Dark Horse, Random House Worlds, Ize Press, Webtoon Unscrolled; Lore Olympus on the New York Times list
- Check: whether the two "Kang Full" entries are one person; every viewing claim
Next chapter: Going Global, which covers overseas platforms and translations, how the format spread to other markets, and the argument about unofficial translations.