Half of Naver's US Webtoons Are Locally Produced...Works Also Re-exported
Domestic Artist Development System Transplanted...Webtoon Creative Ecosystem Established
[Asia Economy Reporter Yuri Choi] The United States, once considered a barren land for webtoons, has emerged as a content supply source for domestic platform companies. This is the result of Naver Webtoon, Kakao Entertainment, and others establishing a webtoon creation ecosystem locally. Beyond introducing Korean webtoons, they have transplanted writer development systems to secure content that resonates in the global market.
On the 17th, Naver Webtoon announced that among the webtoons officially serialized in the U.S. last year, local works accounted for 47%, the second highest proportion after Korea. Among the writers officially serialized in the U.S., 54% came from 'Canvas.'
Canvas is the North American version of the 'Challenge Comics' system. It is a program where amateurs can serialize works without separate distribution contracts, a system created in Korea and brought to the U.S. It also serves as a gateway for writers in the U.S., with the cumulative number of Canvas writers exceeding 120,000. This means that beyond introducing Korean works to the U.S., a local creative ecosystem has been established.
Kakao Entertainment also operates a North American creator community. The number of creators active on Tapas, a North American webtoon platform, and Radish, a web novel platform, reaches about 100,000. The representative work discovered in the community, 'The Beginning, Not the End,' was also published as a standalone volume and ranked third in the fantasy comics category on Amazon U.S. It has been translated into six languages, including Korean, Japanese, and French.
English-language creations are highly valued as a kind of 'Seed Content.' This is because they can expand into English-speaking markets and easily enter Western cultural regions such as Europe and South America.
There are also cases of American content being re-exported to Korea. Kakao Entertainment adapted the Radish serialized work ‘Dating My Best Friend’s Sister’ into the webtoon 'Oppa Bepuwa Datinghagi' and is serializing it on KakaoPage and Kakao Webtoon. The original web novel is a popular work with over 400,000 cumulative subscribers and 50 million views on Radish. Kakao Entertainment plans to produce other web novels, ‘The Billionaire’s Surrogate’ and ‘My Pirate Prince,’ into webtoons and release them in the first half of this year.
Naver Webtoon is releasing content in collaboration with global companies. The 'Supercasting' project with DC Comics is a representative example. Based on DC Comics' super intellectual property (IP) Batman story, they released the webtoon 'Batman: Wayne Family Adventure' and provided services in North America, Latin America, and Europe. Original stories of DC characters such as 'Vixen: New York,' 'Rainhood: Outlaws,' and 'Zatanna & The Reaper' were also introduced as webtoons.
Kim Jun-gu, CEO of Naver Webtoon, said, "Love calls from global entertainment companies such as Marvel, DC Comics, and Netflix are increasing," adding, "Content developed in the U.S. supports growth in the European market and leads to the next step."
Meanwhile, last year, Korean platforms occupied the top five spots in monthly active users (MAU) in the U.S. webtoon platform market. Mobile market research firm Data AI reported that Naver Webtoon ranked first with 9.75 million users (70.5%). It was followed by Ridi’s Manta Comics (9.7%), Kakao Entertainment’s Tapas (8.0%), Content First’s Tapitto (3.9%), which Naver Webtoon also invested in, and NHN’s Pocket Comics (3.2%).
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