The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the World Intellectual Property Organization on Monday announced the joint publication of webtoon “Let’s draw a dream” about the importance of copyrights, created by Korean lawyer Lee Young-wook.

“We are glad that we could work with a professional from our country to create a webtoon that can increase the understanding of the importance of copyrights,” a Culture Ministry official said in a statement.

Lee is currently working as a lawyer that mainly deals with copyrights and entertainment industry-related issues. He graduated from Korea University’s department of law in 1995 and passed the bar exam in 2002.

He started drawing cartoons as a little kid, and after becoming a lawyer, he has been serializing cartoons about laws weekly for News Korean Bar, which is published by Korean Bar Association, for 15 years, He has also published few comic books about copyrights in Korean.

“It is a great honor for me to publish my cartoons with WIPO,” Lee told The Korea Herald.

According to Lee, he initially received a proposal to only draw cartoons for offline publications but the lawyer suggested creating a webtoon as well.

“It seemed really meaningful to introduce Korean webtoons to the world through international organizations,” Lee said. “It meant I had to do additional work, but it was a rewarding process for me.”

He added that it took him around a year to finish the content.

The webtoon is published in three different languages -- Korean, English and Spanish.

“It’s great that my cartoons are translated into English and Spanish, which allows children from all over the world to enjoy them. I felt responsible,” Lee said.

The webtoon is targeted mainly at young readers in elementary school and middle school and depicts a story of two siblings -- an artistic brother Nagool and a sister Naring, who is a fan of boy band Starstar.

The content is distributed through diverse channels including the Culture Ministry, Korea Copyright Commission and Korea Copyright Protection Agency’s official Naver blogs, as well as the WIPO website.

By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@heraldcorp.com)