Character Fair Beckons World Exhibitors
By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
Some 170 exhibitors will participate in the Seoul Character and Licensing Fair 2009 from July 22 to 26 at COEX, southern Seoul. The fair is the largest annual business licensing show in the region.
Among the participants are 60 international productions such as BBC Worldwide, Paramount Pictures and Chorion.
Paramount Pictures, founded in 1912, is the world's oldest film production and distribution company and owns NBC Universal, Marvel, Dreamworks SKG, CBS, Viacom and MTV. Some of the company's biggest hits include ``Forrest Gump,'' ``Mission Impossible,'' ``Titanic,'' ``Indiana Jones'' and ``Transformers.''
Paramount vice president Ryan Gagerman will visit Korea to hold business meetings with Korean content firms.
BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, has developed numerous programs and brands such as Teletubbies, Top Gear, Planet Earth, Charlie and Lola and In the Night Garden. Managing director Maggie Wong will take part in the fair.
Chorion, the UK-based owner and manager of classic and contemporary literary-based brands with worldwide appeal, renowned for the marketing and development of Peter Rabbit, will also join the event.
First appearing in ``The Tale of Peter Rabbit'' in 1902 in London, Peter Rabbit, a fictional anthropomorphic character in various children's stories, has become a licensing product that generates $5 million profits a year. The book has been translated into 35 different languages and has sold 1.5 million copies worldwide.
Other various foreign production companies will also come to Korea to learn about the Korean character industry and the licensing business.
``This year, a lot of the world's top content firms are visiting Korea. It shows that the power of the Korean character industry is growing on the world stage,'' Lee Jae-woong, president of the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), said.
This year, the Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival (SICAF) 2009 and Seoul Promotion Plan (SPP) will be held simultaneously to provide close networking and business opportunities to visitors.
In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Korean comics, ``Time Capsule, 100-Year Trip'' will be the main theme of the SICAF 2009 exhibitions, where visitors will be able to view all the greatest comics, as well as new works from rising new artists from around the world.
Beginning with the newspaper cartoons by Lee Do-young in Dahan Minbo (1909), Korean comics have developed with the changing of the times. As a part of pop culture, it has shown a wide spectrum of aesthetics with new technology and digital media.
The SICAF 2009 Official Competition, one of the top Asian animated film festivals, had total entries of 1,423 films from 52 countries. A pre-selection held in May chose 167 films from 29 countries ― five feature films, 41 professional shorts, 50 student shorts, 23 TV films, 35 commissioned films and 13 Internet animations ― which will be presented to the international jury and the audience at Lotte Cinema Konkuk Univ. from July 22 to 26, along with the films invited to the special programs.
The SPP allows participants to access unique content, leading buyers, the latest information and various business models. The SPP 2009 will take place from July 22 to 24 at COEX.
The Seoul Character and Licensing Fair has been renamed from the Seoul Character Fair ― the event's title for the last five years ― to sharpen the competitiveness of the local character and licensing industry. The fair has served as a marketplace for the local character industry.
In the character industry, ``character'' refers to frequently used pictures or illustrations with certain figures, animals, objects or symbols.