Dongju Founders Yoon Kwangsik and Sejin Oh Named to Forbes Asia 30 Under 30... First in Webtoon Industry

Dongju Yoon Kwangsik CEO

Yoon Kwangsik (29), CEO and co-founder of the webtoon startup Dongju, and Sejin Oh (29), Director, have been named to the "30 Under 30 Asia 2025" list of influential people under the age of 30 in Asia, as announced by the American business magazine Forbes. This is the first time that founders from the webtoon industry have been included on this list.

Forbes annually selects and announces individuals under the age of 30 from various Asian countries who have demonstrated influence in fields such as technology, business, arts, and media. Yoon Kwangsik and Sejin Oh were selected in the "Social Media, Marketing & Advertising" category.

This year's list includes a diverse group of Korean talents in addition to Yoon Kwangsik and Sejin Oh of Dongju, such as the group Stray Kids, actors Go Minshi, Cha Eunwoo, Ha Yerin, the group Big Ocean, chef Kwon Sungjoon, sculptor Jung Yoojin, and Kim Kijeong, CEO of the AI startup Coxwave.

Yoon Kwangsik and Sejin Oh co-founded Dongju in 2022 to address inefficiencies in the webtoon production process. In particular, they have focused on innovating the most time-consuming stage of webtoon production?the recruitment of writers and artists?through technology.

Sejin Oh, Director of Dongju

The software "Spinnoff," developed by Dongju, is a platform that automatically matches webtoon projects with writers and illustrators based on artistic style. According to Dongju, this technology can reduce the recruitment period from an average of one year to about one month.

Based on this technology, Dongju is engaged in adapting web novel intellectual property into webtoons. A representative work is "The Villain's Daughter Plans to Run Away," produced using Spinnoff, which has recorded 7.4 million views on KakaoPage and is also serviced in Japan, the United States, France, and Germany. Dongju has also adapted the popular web novel "Love Letter from the Future" from Novelpia into a webtoon and released it.

Yoon Kwangsik stated, "This recognition is meaningful as it demonstrates the new possibilities emerging from the convergence of technology and the webtoon industry," and added, "We will continue to create content with global competitiveness."