National Library faces crisis over 1.5 million webtoon deposits as dedicated staff count remains zero

With amended Library Act set to take effect in December, just 4.6 TB remains; urgent need to build a preservation system for serialized content

When the amended 'Library Act' takes effect in December, 'webtoons' and 'web novels' assigned a Uniform Content Identifier (UCI) will become subject to mandatory 'legal deposit' at the 'National Library of Korea'. But a critical gap has emerged: The library has neither dedicated storage capacity nor specialized staff to handle the vast volume of digital content pouring in.

'Legal deposit' is a core preservation system under which publishers or producers of library materials must submit those materials to a national institution as required by law.

Data obtained by Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker 'Lim Oh-kyung', a member of the National Assembly's Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee, from the 'National Library of Korea' showed on the 7th that identification codes were assigned to more than 1.54 million 'webtoons' and 'web novels' over the past year. Once the mandatory 'legal deposit' system is fully implemented, more than 1.5 million digital works are expected to be submitted each year.

The problem is that the infrastructure needed to handle this vast volume of data is woefully inadequate. 'Lim Oh-kyung' said no dedicated space has been established to archive 'webtoons' and 'web novels' separately. The library currently has only 4.6 terabytes (TB) of storage, which must also be shared with existing online materials. That capacity would barely preserve even the volume collected over a single year.

The staffing problem is just as serious. Not a single dedicated employee has been assigned to systematically classify and manage millions of serialized works. Under the current dysfunctional arrangement, employees responsible for collecting existing online video materials must also take on the 'legal deposit' work for 'webtoons' and 'web novels'.

'Lim Oh-kyung' stressed that 'webtoons' and 'web novels' are “undeniably Korea's signature 'K-content'” and urged the government to “urgently expand storage capacity, funding and specialized staffing before the system takes effect in December, and build a tailored 'legal deposit' system suited to the characteristics of large-scale serialized content.”