Manhwa is derived from Korean: 만화; Hanja: 漫畵; Korean pronunciation: [manhwa], meaning “whimsical sketches”. The general Korean term for comics and print cartoons is manhwa; however, in early 1990s, digital comics rose in South Korea as an alternative to the struggling manhwa industry. These vertical-scrolling comics, which were made to adapt to the increasingly smartphone-dominated world, were then called webtoon, a combination of the words web and cartoon.