International TV audiences may have fallen in love with Korean series “All of Us Are Dead,” “Itaewon Class” and “Dr. Brain” without ever being aware that each originated as a webtoon, or online com…
International TV audiences may have fallen in love with Korean series “All of Us Are Dead,” “Itaewon Class” and “A clutch of Korean companies is now getting ready to make sure webtoons are the next big thing in the global K-culture takeover.
Webtoons, which are mostly digital originals, made an evolutionary leap with the advent of smartphones and vertical-scrolling. Companies like Naver Webtoon, founded in 2004, started operating as platforms that carried the new content. Given that the figure exceeds the entire population of South Korea, the export drive appears to be working. KOCCA data points to Japan accounting for nearly a third of webtoon exports in 2020, followed by mainland China with 23%. North America rated at 16% and other parts of East Asia, especially Thailand, another 23%.
Toomics, a second-tier platform with some 22 million monthly active users and over 60 million subscribers, was recently acquired for $160 million by Terapin Studios, a branch of U.S.-Korean media investor NPX Capital. Already offering its webtoons in English, Chinese and a handful of European languages, Toomics regards the overseas markets as having huge potential and representing a more level playing field.
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