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Inside Men has attracted 6.37 viewers as of December 19th, reaching the 3rd place in the 2015 box office, next to Veteran and Assassination. For this great performance, Inside Men of course owes a lot to the wonderful balance of masculine acting made by a rare combination of LEE Byung-hun, BAEK Yoon-sik and CHO Seung-woo. However, what equally catches attention is the name YOON Tae-ho, the author of the original webtoon by the same title, who is also the author of Moss, upon which the film Moss is based.

 

As webtoon has become a familiar form of narrative in Korea, films based on webtoon have increased their quality as well as the number of viewers. In 2008, Ba:Bo and Crush on You made from original webtoons with the same titles by KANG Full, one of the major webtoon artists in Korea, each attracted less than 1 million viewers. However in 2011, Late Blossom, also adapted from KANG’s webtoon, received 1.65 million admissions despite the unpopular theme of elderly romance. One year prior, Moss has made a moderate success with 3.4 million viewers and in 2012, 26 Years and The Neighbors based on KANG’s webtoons attracted 2.97 million and 2.43 million viewers respectively.

 

The best performance among the films based on webtoon was made in 2013. Secretly Greatly based on HUN’s webtoon with the same title made a huge success with 6.96 million viewers. To be sure, it greatly owes to the popularity of a top star KIM Soo-hyun, but the original webtoon already had a well established pool of fans.

 

Webtoons are still a very popular form of narrative in Korea and the craze won’t chill out any time soon. Cheese in the Trap, one of the hottest webtoons, is about to be aired early next year, and for With God adapted from JU Ho-min’s webtoon and directed by KIM Yong-hwa(200 Pounds Beauty, 2006), it is expected to begin filming next year featuring HA Jung-woo. Now webtoons are really at the hottest and most prolific center of Korean film contents.