Actors Jung Hae-in, Kim Sung-kyun, Koo Kyo-hwan and Son Seok-koo will play the main roles in the Netflix drama adaptation of the web cartoon series 'D.P Dog's Day'. [Courtesy of Lezhin Entertainment]
Web cartoons, widely known as webtoons in South Korea, are cartoons or comic books created in a format that is optimized for smartphones' displays. South Korea, the birthplace of webtoons has a web cartoon market that is valued at one trillion won ($842 million). "Kingdom", an original zombie-thriller drama series created by Netflix, was based on a webtoon series "Burning Hell".
Lezhin Entertainment, South Korea's web cartoon publisher, said in a statement on September 3 that the 32-year-old actor will star in the Netflix adaptation of "D.P Dog's Day" along with other popular actors Kim Sung-kyun and Son Seok-koo.
Lezhin Entertainment provides online and mobile webcomics services at home and abroad including countries such as the United States, Japan and France. Being consumed anywhere using smartphones, digital cartoon content has become a daily necessity, especially among young people.
Lezhin said that the drama series will be created by Lezhin Studios, the company's drama-making wing. Lezhin Studios is currently in the production of three webtoon-based films including "Hell" (working title), a Netflix Original film scheduled for release in 2021.
D.P Dog's Day created by author Kim Botong is based on an autobiographical story of the author who served as a military policeman tracking down military deserters. The webtoon series released in 2015 was read by more than one million readers.
Low-ranking soldiers go AWOL and become deserters mainly to avoid being abused by their seniors. The number of deserters has decreased from 642 in 2013 to 122 in 2018. The number of suicide cases at military barracks decreased from 45 in 2013 to 21 in 2018.
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