Platformisation and precarity: the restructuring of creative labour in South Korea’s webtoon industry

This study explores how the growing dominance of digital platforms has reshaped creative labour in South Korea’s webtoon industry. Drawing on interviews with 20 industry participants, including creators, producers, platform staff, and experts, it examines how the rise of content providers, studio-based mass production, and algorithmic control have transformed working conditions and occupational identities. These dynamics have produced a pyramidal industry structure in which creators are repositioned from artists or entrepreneurs into managed workers or risk-bearing contractors, stripped of artistic autonomy and labour protections. Although Korean webtoons are often celebrated as a creator-friendly alternative model of cultural production, this study reveals structural tensions in which the vast majority of creators are increasingly treated as disposable labour. Drawing on the concept of platform-mediated creative labour, it further advances a theoretical framework for analysing how platform governance reorganises creative work across cultural industries. Ultimately, this study examines whether the current platform-based system can support sustainable working conditions in the long term.