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By Park Ji-won
According to a survey published Thursday, web comic or novel creators are poorly paid due to the high commissions demanded by internet portals and agencies, with some only getting 10 percent from the sale of their creations.
The survey on the working environment of 285 digital content creators, conducted by Yoon Ja-ho of the Korea Labor Institute, showed that 23.6 percent of 225 respondents who create web comics pay 41 percent to 50 percent of their income to platforms such as Naver and Daum. The survey was conducted from Aug. 3 to 24 on people aged 15 to 39 who make a living by creating digital content such as web comics, illustrations, or web fiction.
If they sign a contract with web comic agencies, they need to pay additional fees accounting for 40.8 percent of their income, meaning 90 percent is being taken by distributors.
Some 38.9 percent of respondents said their income was set based on customary practices, while 23.9 percent said they were paid according to views and performance, and 19.6 percent were paid according to their experience.
Around 25.6 percent of web comic creators didn't know how much commission fees were because they were not disclosed. The annual salary for a web comic creator was 27.5 million won on average while a web fiction author gets about 12.2 million won per year.
"It is hard for a digital content creator to grasp the structure of their income out of entire sales raised on the platforms," Yoon wrote.
The creators are also suffering from working long hours. They work an average of 52.5 hours per week ― web comic creators work 59 hours, fiction authors work 35.4 hours and illustrators work 40.1 hours. They often need to work late or six to seven days a week and sometimes working through the night, the report said.
They said they were also unfairly treated by being asked to unilaterally amend their work (44.9 percent) and forced to sign unfair contracts (36.1 percent).
Most of the creators were freelancers, signing individual contracts with the internet platforms for each piece of work. They are paid around 670,000 won ($606) per piece and additional money depending on its popularity.
The Hankook Ilbo quoted Yoon Jung-hyang, a senior researcher at Korea Labor Society Institute in Seoul, as saying, "Unemployment benefits for artists do not apply to web fiction authors, meaning that they are marginalized in terms of workers' rights … Unfair contract practices should be improved by coming up with a standard contract and a commission fee standard in the field."
