While waiting for friends who haven’t come yet or taking a bus or subway, watching some webtoons or reading short news articles entertains us and makes us joyful. A new trend that takes a short time is called snack culture because it seems like a snack that can be eaten anytime and anywhere.-Ed.



█ What is snack culture?

  Snack culture is not enjoyed only on smartphones. A day’s camping in the mountains or in a valley can also be one kind of snack culture. They appear to be in fashion now. Fast fashion, where manufacturing companies create projects for clothing design, production, fabrication, distribution and sales by themselves, is snack culture too. A small concert held in a subway station or hospital and short performances that can be seen at lunchtime are also snack culture. In other areas, like broadcasting and food production, snack culture has appeared as well.
  Snack culture is based on trends that take less time and effort in contrast with going to concerts or reading books, which take lots of time and effort. Busy students, who have to study, work part-time jobs or find work, and office workers, who have frequent overtime jobs, are the reasons why the snack culture has become popular. The market of snack culture has gotten bigger because of the popularization of mobile gadgets. People who can access the Internet anytime and anywhere have increased the popularity of webtoons and web dramas.

█ Webtoons and web dramas in my daily life

  Webtoons are a typical snack culture. Naver, Daumkakao, Lezhincomics are the famous portal sites for providing webtoons. Lezhincomics are breaking the mold that webtoons are free of charge, and 2014 sales were more than 10 billion won, which is 5 times bigger compared to last year. Korea Creative Content Agency found that the 2013 scale of webtoons market in Korea was 150 billion won. Digieco forecasts that this market will grow up to 295 billion won.
  Web dramas are examples of snack culture. They appeared first in February 2013. In spite of their short history, some portals, the government, and producers are investing much capital in the web dramas. The web dramas can easily receive product placement because there are no restrictions or limitations in web dramas. It means that anyone who wants to make web dramas can produce web dramas easier than TV dramas, which have to be professional. For example, a web drama called Aftereffect(Huyujeung), which is based on a webtoon that author Kim Seon-gwon made, has been exported to several countries including Eastern countries. As a result, there appears to be some people who have seen the web drama as one of the Korean cultures abroad.
  However, this feature of web dramas is also a weakness. The web dramas, which are used in advertisements, lose their quality more easily because they focus on promotion too much. One CBNU student said, “I have often watched web dramas for advertising Innisfree. However, the dramas’ stories are not good because they center on advertising too much, so I had a hard time concentrating on that. I couldn’t understand what they wanted to say. I think that it would be much more effective in commercials.”

█ The shorter, the simpler?

The short amount of time is the feature and merit of snack culture. However, it is also a weakness. It is easy to distort or simplify something because of that point. Snack culture has to attract people in a short time, so even suggestive contents that are harmful for certain people are sometimes used.
One CBNU student said, “It seems that snack culture is enjoyed by people too fast like an instant food. However, it seems good that busy people who have difficulty in having a cultured life can have it through the snack culture.”
Snack culture is growing nowadays, so the potential is big. This means that the snack culture market lies in our hands. Then how about consuming the snack culture smartly? We can make a healthy snack culture market that enhances the merits of snack culture and has lots of valuable content.

By Shin So-hyeon
sh36@cbnu.ac.kr