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`Cartoons/comics have emerged as a primary focal point of the state-of-the-art industries, contributing added value to the publishing, cinema, and electronic game industries, as well as the toy/actiona figure industry, which is making increasingly greater use of cartoon charaters and animation. Cartoons/comics also serve as an interesting medium through which our culture can be conveyed to viewers all over the world. The Ministry of Information and Communication issues a series of stamps featuring various Korean cartoons/comics on an annual basis. The second stamp collection cartoons/comic series being issued in 1996 features Kim Song-hwan`s ``Gobau`` and Hyun-se`s ``Kkach`i`` (which literally translates to ``Korean magpie``and is the nickname of the comic book hero Oh Hye-sung in allusion to his perpetually dishevelled hair). ``Gobau``, created by Kim Song-hwan, first appeared in November 1950. This comic was published in a variety of magazines and dailies such as the Dong-A Ilbo and the Choson Ilbo. Currently running in the Munhwa Ilbo, it is the nation`s oldest comic strip reflecting current events, having run for 46 years. It has enjoyed great popularity among Korean citizens for its biting satires of the country`s political, economic, and social irregularites. The character ``Gobau``, and honest and tactless man in his mid-fifties, expresses all feelings through the movement of the single strand of hair on his head. Along with Gobau, other comic characters such as ``Kid Socket``, ``Kkokkuri and Changdari`` (meaning ``the tall boy``), as well as ``Semodori and Nemodori`` (meaning``the boy with a triangle-shaped face and the boy with a square-shaped face``) were also selected for depiction on the stamp and souveir sheet. ``Kkach`i`` was created by cartoonist Lee Hyun-se as the hero of the 1983 work, ``The Formedable Baseball Team of Out siders``. Though he may seem simply amuzing and gentle in his outward appearance, Kkach`i possesses a toughness inside him which makes him a charimatic leader and spiritual pillar of society in many of Lee`s subsequent works. The stamp and souvenir sheet feature scenes from the battle between the hero Oh Hye-sung(Kkach`i) and his nemesis Caesarius, an alien warrior, in ``Armageddon``, a futuristic science-fiction animated created in 1993. This movie is significant in that it suggests the enormous growth potential of the animation industry with its incorporation of highly-advanced, state-of -the-art scientific developments, such as in multi-media, which allow it to expand into many other related business areas, including videos, computer games, and toys/action figures. The Ministry of Information and Communication is issuing the two stamps and two souvenir sheets of the cartoon series in time for the 74th Children`s Day in the hopes of giving momintum to the continued development of the local cartoon industry into one of the nation`s high value-added, strategic businesses, as well as to attract more teenage philatelists.`