VOL.74/2024.09

Creative, ingenious Korean webtoons are leading the fourth Hallyu (Korean Wave) across the world.

Devil Number 4, A Good Day to be a Dog, Omniscient Reader

 

 

List of popular comics on Lezhin (as of 2020)

 

Tappytoon started its service in 2016 and has been mainly providing translations of popular Korean webtoons. Serialized works include Solo Leveling (D&C Media), Light and Shadow (Shinyoung Media), Daughter of the Emperor (D&C Media), Bloody Sweet (C&C Revolution), What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim, and Cherry Blossoms After Winter. The primarily serviced webtoons are romance and fantasy to target female readership. Its number of net users per month (MUA) exceeds 5 million, and there’s a total of more than 80 thousand webtoons, including web-novels.
Last year, NHN Comico launched “Pocket Comics” in July, and Ridi, an e-book platform, started “Manta” in the US, which provides a monthly subscription service of webtoons, serializing Under the Oak Tree (Ridibooks) and Lady Devil (Orange D).
Independent publishers or Korea’s small- and medium-sized platform companies such as Redice, C&C Media, ECOMIX, and C&C Revolution are expanding their influence in the market by servicing webtoons through each platform service provider in the US.

 

 

Meanwhile, Tower of God (Young Com), which was already famous before its official translation was provided, is now serviced in English, Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Spanish, and French through WEBTOON (Line Webtoon), an official translation service of Naver Webtoon. The response is tremendous. There are more than 20 unofficial fan translations of the work, and the accumulated views worldwide have passed 4.5 billion. Its RPG mobile game was released in 2016, and an animation series was aired on TV in April 2020, attracting more fans from across the world.
The God of High School (Image Frame) serialized on Naver Webtoon and Line Webtoon was made into a 13-episode TV animation and a game by MAPPA with a joint investment from Crunchyroll, a US streaming business, Naver Webtoon, and Warner Bros. Pictures Japan.
A modern fantasy fiction Solo Leveling by Chugong has turned into an action-fantasy webtoon by Jang Seong-Nak, the head of Redice, which produces and distributes comics, webtoons, and videos. It has generated a frenzy across the world among fantasy webtoons on all platforms. All its chapters from 1 to 110 were officially uploaded on "Webnovel" at once, a platform for web-novels, webtoons, and comics headquartered in the US and UK, which then drew 55 million subscribers. Right after that, it was uploaded on Tappytoon, a webtoon platform serviced in the US and UK that provides English translations of popular webtoons serialized in Korea in the changed title “Solo Leveling” in June 2020, and soon became the most popular work.
On top of these, works that succeeded as a “novel-comics (webtoons that base on web-novels)” are gaining more popularity worldwide such as a “novel-comics (webtoons that base on web-novels)” are gaining more popularity worldwide such as Daughter of the Emperor, The Remarried Empress, Omniscient Reader, Empress of Another World (D&C Media), Doctor Elise: The Royal Lady with the Lamp (KW Books), and First Night with the Duke (Maru Books).

 

 

There’s also another webtoon that is drawing massive popularity. It is Omniscient Reader, a modern fantasy that triggered the beginning of apocalypse comics in Korea. It was originally written as a web-novel on Moonpia, which recorded more than 100 million views, and has two volumes of books already published. It has already signed a contract for TV drama and film production late last year while being serialized on Naver Webtoon. The filmmaker for the movie is Realies Pictures, the same producer of the movie “Along with the Gods.”
Meanwhile, 2.6 million people subscribe to Sweet Home on Tappytoon, which has recorded more than 1.2 billion views worldwide. Its drama on Netflix ranked third in December 2020. Such performance has led the author’s other work Bastard (Sodam Books) that has 1.4 million subscribers on Tappytoon to sign more contracts to publish it in comic books. Other similar cases where the success on TV or Netflix boosts the webtoon’s popularity are Love Alarm, The Uncanny Counter, Itaewon Class (Young Com), and True Beauty.
The Maid and the Vampire (Ecomics Media) is a romance fantasy webtoon serialized on the Lezhin Comics application of ECOMIX, a representative BL story ranking 1st in its category in 2020. It is a hot webtoon among paid subscribers on Tappytoon (where it recorded 1.8 million views), Manta, and Pocket Comics (mobile application).

 

 

Korean webtoons are achieving success in a short period of time, leading the spread of the “snack culture” in the US with its platform business model that can expand the stories into spin-off content such as games, movies, and dramas. Also, while adopting the “Freemium (partially paid service),” a stable source of income, they are successfully expanding influence in the market and discovering local authors considering the characteristics and culture of the US market. The background of such a stable business foundation has been greatly supported by the rapid technological development across the world where more people are using mobile devices.
Now, unique and creative Korean webtoons are leading the fourth Hallyu (Korean Wave). The times when webtoons used to be serviced for free relying on PPS advertisements as people were focused on attracting users to newly created portal websites have become history. Now, the webtoon business has transformed into a goose that lays golden eggs.

 

 

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Written by Kim Nam-Ho (President of Topaz Agency)