Platformizing Webtoons: The Impact on Creative and Digital Labor in South Korea

Abstract

Despite the transformative benefits of platform technology for cultural production, critical scholars have raised vigilance against the emergence of digital platforms as a new hegemonic constellation of 21st-century capitalism, and the neoliberal governance and exploitation of labor that concomitantly intensify. Taking as a case study, the platformization of the "Webtoon" industry in South Korea, this article addresses such concerns, questioning the potentially detrimental effects of platforms on creative labor and their dominance in the market. More importantly, however, it commands wider attention to how platformization has been restructuring this particular cultural industry, and reveals that this process does not simply augment exploitation. Instead, focusing our analysis on the reconfiguration of the process of Webtoon production and the opportunities it affords for the creative labor, we illuminate the complication of relationship between the involved actors, and argue for a broader scope of inquiry that makes explicit the ramifications of platformization on cultural production.