Comics fever sweep cyber world

Lim Chan-Il, 35, an S-bank`s clerk, has added a new pleasure to his daily life these days. After work, he surfs Internet to read again the best-seller comic book by Lee Hyun-Se, ¡°Alien Team of Horror,`` he used to be absorbed in throughout the night during his school days. Nothing can match with the ¡°taste`` of turning over the pages with the mouse.

Numerous netizens who were reluctant to go to comic shops full cigarette smoke and ramen smell are rejoicing over the opening of cyber comic rooms.

Comics websites are competing with each other to be ranked first and second in the frequency of visiting among the various service firms` contents. The comic website of Lycos Korea is visited by 500,000 people on average a day, with the number of page views reaching 15 million. PC rooms, which used to be used a place for computer games, are frequented these days by those who want to see comics.

This kind of cyber comic fever in Korea is a unique phenomenon that can be hardly found in the world. In the United States and Japan, known as the paradise of comics, this sort of cyber comics is in the initial stage. Yet, experts predict that Internet will surge to be a more powerful media than paper or movie not before long.

As netizens` response to the cyber comics is so enthusiastic beyond expectation, Internet portal sites and PC communication firms are opening new comic sites or refurbishing their existing sites one after another.

Cho Eun-Jung in charge of comics at the contents business team of Nownuri said, ¡°I think the craze for Internet comics will go on for the time being. Service firms are preparing more active scenes by using ¡°flash,`` a new manufacturing technique rather than simply moving the paper comics to the websites

kkh@donga.com