I’ve seen this happen a lot with mangaka and webtoon/manwha artists. A lot of them have bad health or things like injuries in hand. But I do notice that wbetoon artists take breaks more often, probably bc their work is harder(coloring n all)
I’m not sure if it’s the same, but a mangaka is a contractor. They are generally self-employed (similar to a novelist) they get paid by contract based on the work they submit so there’s no such thing as a "paid leave". They have deadlines.
Work culture in Japan is very intense and Korea being one of it not the most demanding. So this isn’t uncommon and it’s definitely not just happening to them
The reason why these artists have bad health is bc of the strict deadlines, creativity, and procrastination which are leading to an unhealthy schedule.
Maybe if we get one chapter every two weeks they'd be healthier, but fans are very demanding(and... toxic...) so the popular publishers demand a chapter a week.
I've been thinking this a lot, but every single long-running manhwa I've read has a point where the author talks about how much their health declined while working on the story. Health should always be the priority. It seems like the publishing schedules that they're bound to and the deadlines they're expected to meet are too much? I know bringing this up on mangago of all places will do jack, but I wish there was something that could be done to get the overseas publishers to ease off some of the pressure. Without creators, there is no manhwa (and thus no profit for greedy publishing companies) so I wish the artists and authors were better taken care of.