What kind of comics?

Web comics are quite the growing industry in South Korea, according to this story on Donga.com. By their estimations 45 billion Won (roughly $43 million) will be exchanged by 2005's end by readers and sites offering pay-per-view Web comics. The trend is mystifying:

According to Korea Culture and Content Agency, the Internet comic book market, worth about 16.9 billion won in 2002, more than doubled to 35 billion won in 2004.

These numbers are spectacular just for casual recreational crunching, but the big implications here seem to be the increasingly lucrative opportunities for comics artists in South Korea.

They favor the Internet for publishing their cartoons because of the stable income to be found there.

In the case of off-line books, no matter how many books are rented at book rental stores, a royalty for only one book goes to copyright holders, which means even being a best seller cartoonist does not necessarily mean a huge income.