Naver Webtoon, South Korean tech giant Naver’s web-based cartoon platform, announced that it is receiving applications for “The Greatest Webtoon Contest 2022” starting Wednesday.

The contest will be held twice this year, with the goal of promoting the creative content industry and local webtoons as well as finding webtoon creators to lead the company, Naver Webtoon said.

Applicants are required to submit a maximum of three episodes and may present additional documents, including the synopsis and character sheet.

The submitted works will be evaluated in three different categories -- creativity, popularity and level of completion.

A total of 20 webtoon series will be selected and among them, two grand prize winners will each be awarded 50 million won ($40,300).

The company will choose three series for the best excellence and five excellence awards, for which each of the creators will receive a prize money of 30 million won and 10 million won, respectively. Ten webtoon series will be selected for the encouragement prize, awarded with 5 million won each.

The 20 winners will also get an opportunity to officially serialize their webtoons on the Naver Webtoon platform as well.

Applications will be accepted Wednesday through June 6. Only Korean-language webtoon series will be accepted.

The second edition of the contest is scheduled to start Sept. 5.

By Lee Si-jin (sj_lee@heraldcorp.com)