The South Korean webtoon industry saw its combined sales top 1 trillion won ($843.6 million) for the first time in 2020, government data showed.

The total sales of the local web-based comic market amounted to 1.05 trillion won in 2020, up 64.6 percent from a year earlier, according to the data by the Culture Ministry and the Korea Creative Content Agency.

It is the first time that the annual industrywide sales surpassed the 1 trillion-won threshold since 2017, when the ministry started to compile the data on comics being read on smartphones.

Webtoon platforms posted 519.1 billion won in sales last year, while production agencies earned 534.7 billion won.

The number of newly created web comics fell 17.2 percent on-year to 2,617 last year, with 7,407 authors. (Yonhap)