Less than six years after being acquired by Kakao Entertainment and less than a year after webnovel platform Radish closed their service, Tapas will be shuttering their webtoon and webnovel operations for good.

Shit.

Earlier this week, I was in on a conference call and the topic of Korean government grants came up. For those who don’t know, the Korean government has been funding cultural content for decades doing everything from covering convention costs to marketing and production costs.

Yes, the obvious ones are big events like K-Con and the K-Comics Festa which are partially funded by the Korean government. But then there are booths at licensing fairs, translation costs for webtoons, and production for animated projects.

Because these are public grants, many of the recipients are publicly listed after the titles are chosen. And in this case, the 2026 Animation Prodcution Grant (link) for series’, feature films, IP projects, and content for young adults was announced back in April and includes a few webtoon titles.

These webtoon titles aren’t just in production, the studios producing them have received funding from the Korean government to do so. Speaking as someone who’s applied for Korean government grants in the content sector, the requirements are strict. Which means barring any catastrophic developments, these are essentially confirmed for streaming and (in one case) theatrical release.

Let’s get to it.

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Latna Saga: The Survival Sword King

This is the big one and the one I’ve kept my eye on since it was announced back in 2024. It’s notable for two reasons: (1) Red Dog, the studio that produces the webtoon, also operates an animation studio which will be handling the anime adaptation which is a first for Korea, but more importantly, (2) Studio Pierrot of Bleach and Naruto fame will be collaborating on the project (!!).

So while I wasn’t surprised to see “Latna Saga: The Survival Sword King” on the list in the #2 slot, I was really excited to have actual confirmation that the project is still underway.

I Don’t Want This Kind of Hero

Certainly the oldest webtoon on this list and one that has been left behind by current readers is I Don’t Want This Kind of Hero which was published in Korea back in 2011 and English in 2014, both on the WEBTOON platform. The bigger news behind it is the production studio, Laftel. If you don’t know who they are, that’s fine but they are the biggest anime streaming service in Korea which is saying something considering how crowded the market is.

I had to double check this and the only thing I found in English was a screenshot of a Korean blog post by a producer at Laftel confirming that I Don’t Want This Kind of Hero was being adapted to anime… on Reddit.

+99 Reinforced Wooden Stick

This one isn’t a major surprise considering how insanely popular it was in Korea not to mention the amount of money Naver spent promoting the title all around Seoul. But upon further inspection, there isn’t any news about this item… anywhere

That being said, an application for government funding is a serious deal. And the fact that they were approved can only mean that the studio had proof of licensing and proceeded far enough into production that the government felt comfortable handing over a check.

Low Tide in Twilight

This one made my jaw drop. Partly because it’s a title that was contracted and published during my time at Lezhin, but mostly because it had never come up on my radar until now.

The company on the grant is Studio Animal, but Soyomo has been promoting this project all over social media since late August. Considering Low Tide in Twilight is an adult title… we’ll have to see what form the final series takes.

There are currently some animation tests available to see on Soyomo’s twitter and Youtube pages, but be warned… they’re rough. We’ll have to hope that the final product has some more polish.

Study Group: Pi Han-wool Origin

The Study Group webtoon series on Naver will be taking to the screen with this feature animated film being developed for theatrical release. The studio behind the title is Studio Emation which has worked since the early 90’s on titles like Futurama, Adventure Time, Samurai Jack, Scooby-Doo, Grafity Falls, and… literally tens of other titles.

This might be the first time the studio works on a webtoon project and they’ve certainly chosen a heavy hitter. There are plenty of rumors about YLab’s troubles (the studio behind the Study Group webtoon), but a hit feature would certainly go a long ways to helping turn that around.

Elixir of the Sun

During my time at Lezhin, getting the English license for this title was a MAJOR win. It was one of those titles I never stopped talking about and one that my coworkers were definitely tired of hearing me rave about it.

We’ve had a few tidbits of news here and there with auditions for the Korean version taking place earlier this year. This is definitely one of DCC’s strongest webtoon titles, so I think we all have our hopes high for this one.

Exorcism Chronicles 2

Exorcism Chronicles released last year and made its way to streaming (on Disney + in Korea) after getting some decent reviews. The fact that it’s getting a sequel is… not surprising.

And that’s it folks.

There are multiple other titles, yes. But so far as I can tell, they’re not webtoon adaptations so I’ve left them for someone else to cover.

As for me, I’ll be reviewing the application guidelines for next year when my own work will be requiring me to apply for this grant for (hopefully) a webtoon adaptation that I’m currently drafting myself.

Fingers crossed folks!

And while tentpole titles are necessary for webtoon platforms, the assumption has always been that if a webtoon were big enough, it could do that for the whole industry. That’s what we’d call a mega IP.

Before we get started, I think we need to define the concept of the “mega IP”, because it’s a concept that exists in multiple industries with different preconceptions of what it is.

But in the webtoon industry, a “mega IP” is expected to do three different things:

1. Stand out internationally as a standalone webtoon IP

2. Find success in another medium outside of webtoons (film, video games, etc.)

3. Increase recognition of the webtoon medium

Got it? Great, because now we get to pick it apart.

The Solo Leveling Conundrum

There are plenty of webtoons that are or have published in the international market as a “mega IP”. The Remarried Empress is a good one and, considering a new K-drama adaptation is currently slated for Disney+, one could argue it’s a successful one. But the obvious is Solo Leveling.

I still remember taking meetings for years at conventions where everyone I met was asking if I knew what the next Solo Leveling coming out of Korea would be. Literally days of meetings where that was the only title people wanted to talk about.

And why wouldn’t they?

Solo Leveling started as a massively popular webnovel which was translated into a massively popular webtoon. And now, that webtoon has spawned a sequel, a mobile game, and an anime.

So, is Solo Leveling a mega IP? Yes.

But it’s not a model that any webtoon IP is looking to follow.

Solo Leveling’s anime came out of the gate with amazing action scenes and a story that’s compelling enough to have taken over social media for months at a time. At a time when there are a plethora of isekai action titles being published and produced in Japan, Solo Leveling made a massive dent in the preconcieved notions of what webtoons and animes based on webtoons could do.

If that weren’t enough, the Solo Leveling mobile game hit hard in Asia making it likely the most successful moblie game based on a webtoon IP.

But the sequel, Ragnarok, hasn’t hit nearly as hard. Everyone agrees that the art is great, but the story hasn’t caught audiences by storm like the original. And having a staggered international release was… a choice. Not a good one, obviously.

Did it stand out as a standalone webtoon? Yes. Did it find success in another medium? Yes. Did it increase recognition of the webtoon medium? Absolutely.

Is Solo Leveling a mega IP? Yes. But the lack of licensing, merchandising and financial return in comparison to international heavy weights like Naruto, Jiujistu Kaisen, or even Invincible it pales in comparison.

Solo Leveling is the most successful example of a Korean mega IP, but it would be hard to make the argument that it’s a successful one.

The Platform Problem

Obviously, the topic of this blog post didn’t come out of thin air. It stems from a Naver WEBTOON story that got picked up in Korea and internationally. WEBTOON stated that their strategy is to cultivate a “mega IP” that expands a webtoon into Netflix dramas, animations, games, merch and more.

More specifically, Kim Yong-su (president of Webtoon Entertainment) was quoted to say “Our goal is to grow mega IP that can stand alongside global top-tier IP.”

Since then, it’s become a buzzword for Big Green, getting recycled and trotted out over and over again, most recently for press releases for the Record of the Lodoss War webtoon launch and again for Naver’s investment in RI Games.

In theory, the biggest comics publisher on the planet announcing an iniative to cultivate and grow an international mega IP should mean something. That’s going to mean more investment in content, talent, and resources overall.

Just one small problem.

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Let’s take a look.

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Kidari by the Numbers

First, the big numbers:

• Revenue: 64.42 billion KRW (22.1% increase YoY)

• Operating Profit: 5.52 billion KRW (193.19% increase YoY)

A quick reminder, because I’m assuming most folks are going to compare Kidari Studio with Webtoon Entertainment’s Q2 financials which I posted about last week, while both companies are technically both webtoon companies the genres and audiences they work with are completely different.

Kidari Studio operates the Bomtoon and Lezhin suite of webtoons which means they are singularly focused on adult titles, specifically BL content in the international digital publishing market.

The big business move in Q1 was the launching of Lezhin Snack, the short-form content publishing platform that’s positioned to compete with ReelShorts and other pay-per-view short-form content platforms. Lezhin Snack launched in early February which makes Q2 the first full-quarter that the platform has been operational.

But to see whether the platform has made an impact, we have to dig a bit deeper.

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Overseas and Domestic Revenue by Division

Kidari’s financial reports break this down further into their four divisions, but let’s stick to the content-side which are webtoon, webnovel, and video.

Let’s start with webtoons.

Webtoons

• Webtoon revenue: 53.32 billion KRW

• Webtoon operating profits: 4.73 billion KRW

Right off the bat, the webtoon division has been firmly in the black for the fourth consecutive quarter at Kidari Studio. It’s a healthy sign that the company has found a balance between operations and production.

• Webtoon: 53.32 billion KRW (27.64% increase YoY)

  • Domestic (Korea): 45.29 billion KRW (49.32% increase YoY)

  • Overseas: 7.65 billion KRW (33.16% decrease YoY)

Right off the bat, the Korean webtoon operations side has seen a significant increase YoY showing that the female-adult webtoon market is string incredibly strong in Korea.

Worryingly, the overseas market has collapsed year-on-year with a 33.16% drop in revenue. The overseas market includes French, Thai, English, Spanish, Japanese and German so it’s going to be nearly impossible to know which languages are responsible for the drop.

That being said… 7.65 billion KRW is a concerningly low number. Especially compared to 2025 when the lowest quarterly revenue was 11.44 billion KRW in Q2. And when you compare it to Q1 2026 when the overseas revenue was 17.95 billion KRW… yeah.

Webnovel

I always think of skipping this one, but it’s worth mentioning as part of the industry cycle.

• Webnovel revenue: 1.15 billion KRW

  • Domestic (Korea): 1.15 billion KRW (15.34% decrease YoY)

• Webnovel operating profits: -268 million KRW

Webnovel revenue is a gimme as the it’s the lowest earning division which follows the pattern we’ve seen in the Korean market.

Video

Which brings us to the video division.

• Video revenue: 1.18 billion KRW

  • Domestic (Korea): 732.72 million KRW (16.13% decrease YoY)

  • Overseas: 447.76 million KRW (11.11% increase YoY)

• Video operating profits: -863.45 million KRW

In terms of numbers, the drop is quite extreme. We’re seeing a 55.82% decrease overall from Q1 while the Korean-side saw a 71.40% drop from Q1. While Kidari Studio does license IPs and directly participate in film production, Lezhin Snack is likely their biggest ongoing business projects.

And when viewed through that lens, the numbers for Lezhin Snack are unimpressive but the platform is less than a year old and in direct competition with the current ongoing short-form boom.

And considering the fact that Kidari is still actively producing new titles to launch on the platform, it makes sense they’d still be in the red.

Long story, short: webtoons are profitable and running the entire show.

Merch is Up… and Down

The big news of the day is merchandising which, in the webtoon industry, is the profit driver. When you consider production costs, platform operations, and marketing… somehow physical merch is more profitable which is something.

• Merchandising revenue: 8.78 billion KRW

  • Domestic (Korea): 8.08 billion KRW (35.76% increase YoY)

  • Overseas: 698.56 million KRW (50.39% decrease YoY)

• Merchandising operating profits: 1.91 billion KRW

Don’t let the last line get you down because it’s positive overall.

As Korea is the home of Kidari and Lezhin’s merch operations, shipping and fulfillment are going to take a significant amount of time.

That being said, the increase in revenue in Korea is heartening and it’s only a matter of time until overseas production and logistics catches up. Hopefully. I mean, they better.

But the profitability of the division and the increase in Korea’s revenue mean that the company has a strong baseline and understanding of what their fandom wants. Now, they just have to get it to them.

Looking Forward

The biggest moves on the horizon are actually content related which is possibly the best sign for the company. The biggest title in the history Lezhin Comics’ catalogue, Painter of the Night, recently launched a new set of special episodes back in July.

Yes, there have been some hiccups. The most public is the closure of Lezhin Comics Japan (in favor of BeLToon, a separate Japanese webtoon platform owned and operated by Kidari Studio), but that’s only a hiccup. Lezhin Snack has the potential to be either a genius expansion into a new medium or just another black hole of resources and funding.

Overall, the market sentiment is positive with Kidari Studio’s stock price rising significantly after the Q2 earnings report was released. Even after the screenshot below, Kidari’s stock rose to 6,180 KRW a share.

If this is what we’re seeing for Q2, I’m very curious to see what happens in Q3.

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The funds will be going to the LINE Digital Frontier Corporation, which operates the LINE Manga platform in Japan, a wholly owned subsidiary of Naver Webtoon and Webtoon Entertainment.

Before we get too far, we need some context.

Why Japan?

Everyone knows that the digital scrolling webtoon format was developed and popularized in Korea. Naver wasn’t the first company to use the medium, but they have been the driving force behind popularizing it internationally for mainstream audiences.

It’s important to keep in mind, though, that Japan is Webtoon Entertainment’s largest market internationally. The Q2 revenue for Japan was 150.403 million USD which nearly 12 million USD over Korea which came in at 138.49 million USD.

But, Japan’s revenue for Q2 was 15.4% down from 2025 when it hit 177.881 million USD.

Webtoon Entertainment’s biggest market is Japan and in-country revenue, monthly active user count, and monthly paid user count both fell in Q2 compared to 2025.

See that? That’s context.

I’m not the only one that’s seeing stagnation in the Japanese market as a cause for concern. During the Q2 earnings call early in August, Mark Mahaney from Evercore asked specifically to expand on what WEBTOON was doing about Japan and what was necessary to “return to growth”.

David Lee’s (CFO for Webtoon Entertainment) response focused on local content, greater engagement, and distribution partnerships. Now Naver’s been working with Japanese studios for a while, but they took a monumental step forward in April with STUDIO WHITE, a joint venture between themselves, Kadokawa, and REDICE.

Those last two names cover Sword Art Online, Delicious in Dungeon, Oshi No Ko, Solo Leveling, and Omniscient Reader along with a whole lot of others.

Where’s it going?

In Q2, the global marketing budget for Webtoon Entertainment was 38.336 million USD. Naver and WEBTOON’s investment would be nearly triple that.

It’s enough to reach every online Japanese citizen several times over through online ads, buy physical ad space or run in-person campaigns, host multiple boths at conventions or potentially run their own convention if they pleased.

That being said, I think there’s a bigger push on the horizon.

Content.

That’s where I’m hoping the bulk of the money is going, whether it be straight into production deals or into incentives for studios and creatives when it comes to the Japanese webtoon industry.

Unlike the US or western countries, Japan already had a thriving manga industry developing stories for local audiences. And while webtoon was big with indie storytellers in the US, it’s a whole different market in Japan.

The partnership with Kadokawa in the form of STUDIO WHITE has already resulted in one marriage of webtoon with manga in the form of "“Record of the Lodoss War: Queen of Death”. With the Disney Deal, WEBTOON has original Disney and Marvel content heading for their platform, but it’s a stretch. Western comics have attempted several cross-collaborations with Japanese manga over the decades and it’s an imperfect fit. Manga and webtoons, on the other hand… it could work.

Oof, that view count, though.

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Let’s get to it.

A long time coming

On June 8, 2025, the Maeil Business Newspaper reported that NHN would be shuttering their French Pocket Comics platform with more details to come. This was a part of the webtoon industry’s internation constriction that saw the closure of European and Southeast Asian platforms. The bigger bomb dropped a week later on June 16th when NHN announced they would be closing their North American and Korean platforms as well, leaving only their Japanese platform remaining (link).

Based on conversations I had with folks in Korea, the word was that there were only two folks left in the international business team (international in this case meaning business outside of Japan), a team lead and a manager, both of whom were now charged with international distribution and rights licensing.

And now, the final bomb.

According to a report by NBNTV, NHN will be terminating the Comico platform in Japan as well.

What does this mean about NHN’s webtoon business?

NHN will be continuing as a content provider or publisher/studio producing webtoon content which will then be carried by other platforms. This, of course, is a change we already saw after the international platforms ended their service last year.

You can now find translated Comico/Pocket Comics titles on multiple other platforms ranging like Tappytoon and Tapas. More details are available on the NBNTV post, but NHN was able to close the deficit on their books in their webtoon operations by shuttering their overseas platforms.

The decision to follow suit in Japan could only mean that the platform was no longer the driving force in revenue, more likely a hinderance that was having trouble competing with the giants in digital content distribution already in Japan.

But that’s not the question we should be asking.

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What does this say about Japan?

It says a lot. But before we get there, let’s rewind a little bit.

There’s been a fair amount of news about Japan recently. LINE Manga recently announced a partnership with NTT Docomo for a Anime subscription service where over 4,000 titles would be streamable on a new “Anime” tab on the LINE Manga app.

The original post made no mention of new adaptations (ala the Warner X WEBTOON deal) which means that it’ll be exclusively pre-existing titles available to view.

And back on August 1st, Lezhin Comics Japan announced that they would be terminating their services on January 31st, 2027. Lezhin Comics Japan will be shuttered and accounts will be rolled onto BeLTOON, a more recent and BL-heavy platform launched not long after Lezhin’s acquisition by Kidari Studio.

Yes, that’s right. In one month, we’ve had news of two webtoon platforms shuttering in the Japanese market.

And just last week, we got numbers for WEBTOON’s Q2 finaicials that gave a look at their performance in the Japanese market. And it’s bad.

In short, WEBTOON saw a 15.5% year-on-year decrease in Q2 revenue from 2025. 150.403 million USD isn’t anything to sneeze at and it’s still nearly 10% more than Korea which brought in 138.49 million USD during the same period, but Korea saw a 10.1% increase YoY. Similarly, the MAU (monthly active users) in Japan dropped to 21.8 million while the MPU (monthly paying audience) dropped down to 2.1 million.

Basically, every metric that matters saw a sizeable decrease in Q2 when it comes to LINE Manga’s market share of Japan.

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What does this signal for the webtoon industry at large?

More than likely, a slight restructuring of the webtoon industry’s international landscape. The closure of NHN’s Comico platforms is, while sad, not a major disruption to the market nor will it change how the industry will operate. And while Lezhin Comics Japan, while one of the first webtoon platforms to launch in Japan, was all but dead the second they split BL content off to BeLTOON.

And while WEBTOON’s declining revenue in Japan is cause for concern, it is the LARGEST paying market for webtoons. Big Green will re-evaluate and adapt their strategies for Japan, but they’re not going to abandon it altogether.

The bigger signal that we’re seeing is that the international webtoon market is no longer expanding, at least not internationally. The failures in foreign markets is nearly complete with the US market being the last holdout. Yes, it is the biggest market outside of Asia and, yes, the bulk of marketing is likely spent on Americans.

But the American webtoon market is already overpopulated with WEBTOON (Naver), Tapas (Kakao), Manta (RIDI), Tappytoon and Lezhin (Kidari Studio). There are already signs that the US market is running to trouble based on stagnant revenues in publicly reported figures.

So, then the question becomes what’s next?

(If someone says short-form videos, I swear to God…)

This time around, I’ll be looking at the SEC filing rather than the summarized version that I usually go over. For anyone who wants to read it for themselves, check it out here.

For the rest of us, let’s get going.

The Big Number

Revenue dropped to 338.465 million USD representing a 2.8% decrease in Q2 revenue YoY (from 348.271 million USD in 2025).

Revenue by itself isn’t an indicator of the business’ health, operational viability, or even whether the business is on the right path towards achieving their goals.

So, obviously, we need to drill deeper.

Where is the Revenue Coming From?

WEBTOON separates their revenue into three categories: paid content, advertising, IP adaptations.

• Paid content: 263.941 million USD(3.99% decrease YoY)

• Advertising: 47.124 million USD (4.21% increase YoY)

• IP adaptations: 27.4 million USD (2.62% decrease YoY)

Paid content is revenue arising from purchase of Coins which are then spent unlocking episodes on the platform. It’s the largest part of the pie which makes sense as WEBTOON is, first and foremost, a content publisher. Interestingly, paid content also includes 2.6 million USD of physical book sales through the platform for Q2 and 5.0 million USD of physical book sales in H1.

Advertising is the revenue from display ads as well as product placement within content. The ratio isn’t available here, but in all likelihood it’s skewed towards display ads or ad partnerships rather than product placement.

Finally, IP adaptations revenue is the internal development of film, streaming series, or other format adaptations commissioned by third party studios and or platforms. Basically, this would encompass everything from the K-dramas on Netflix to… the K-dramas on Amazon Prime. There’s other stuff, too, but that’s the most successful stuff we’ve seen. Interesting, this gets further broken down to include two sub categories: licensing from sublicensing content which attributes 8.0 million USD (Q2) and 11 million USD (H1), and finally merch sales (external platforms, IP royalties, and pop-ups) to 1.9 million USD (Q2) and 3.3 million USD (H1).

The total revenue gets broken down by region once more into three buckets: Korea, Japan, and Rest of World.

• Korea: 138.49 million USD (10.1% increase YoY)

• Japan: 150.403 million USD (15.5% decrease YoY)

• Rest of World: 49.572 million USD (11% increase YoY)

The Good.

Yes, there’s good stuff to be seen.

IP adaptation has had some decent wins over the past quarter with “Teach You a Lesson” and “Yumi’s Cells” returning for a third season, virtually unheard of in the Korean entertainment sphere.

And the continued expansion into print is going to be a necessary set of revenue for digital publishers and platforms like WEBTOON.

Based on the regional readout, WEBTOON is back to finding their footing in Korea. They saw a 10.1% increase in revenue for the Korean market and an 11% increase in revenue for the rest of the world. This matches of with the MAU (monthly active user) data trends that showed a 5.6% increase in MAU for Korea (24.3 million) and a 0.18% increase in MAU for the rest of the world (110.7 million).

The MPU (monthly paying users) also saw increases in Korea to 3.8 million (11.8% increase YoY) and in the Rest of the World is at 1.7 million which stayed even from last year.

The Bad.

Japan.

The revenue from Japan logged in at 150.403 million USD, down 15.4% from the 177.881 million USD in 2025. Since 2024, we’ve been seeing news articles in Korea about LINE Manga has seen increases in the market at a consistent rate.

Those increases hit the wall in 2025 and we’re now seeing the downslope as Naver struggles in the second biggest paid digital webtoon market in the world. The MAU in Japan similarly saw a drop from 22.6 million in Q2 2025 down to 21.8 million while the MPU dropped 8.7% to 2.1 million from 2.3 million in 2025.

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And then, inevitably, my parents bought me BtAS toys, Power Rangers shirts, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and Pokemon games.

That evolved into me… buying BtAS toys, Power Rangers merch, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and Pokemon everything.

The content-licensing-merchandising cycle isn’t new. My favorite example is an old diagram at Disney which, although it’s outdated and more complex than I would’ve imagined, lines up perfectly with my childhood experience as a kid growing up in Southern California.

The cycle creates content (books, movies, TV shows, songs, etc.) and then finds ways to monetize that content through licensing, merchandising, or (in the case of Disney) a theme park.

Basically, create a TV show, book, movie or song (or game) people enjoy, then sell them something related to what they justed watched/read/listened to/played.

And aside from the fact that the medium has shifted from movie theaters, network television and radio to internet-streaming-everything, the cycle hasn’t evolved much. See something interesting on Netflix, Crunchyroll or Paramount+? Go to Target the next day and see how many of those IPs are now on the shelves.

And there’s a very simple reason for all that: content isn’t awfully profitable.

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What about webtoons?

Just to clarify, I’m talking about the industry as in “small w” in the header. That being said, I’ll be talking a bit about “big W” as in Big Green below.

First, let’s make one thing clear: WEBTOON (Big Green) is the world’s biggest publisher of comics. That makes the webtoon industry, likely, the world’s biggest publishing medium.

Thus far, the industry has succeeded on multiple fronts. Print licensing into larger markets like France, the USA, and Germany have yielded mixed results but several large scale successes. Homegrown titles like “Lore Olympus” have been exceedingly successful, but “Solo Leveling” likely tops the list with notable successes in the BL market with “Painter of the Night” and “Love is an Illusion!”

There have been misses, of course. Less public, but every catalogue has a handful of titles that have crossed the vaunted million view mark online only to flop on shelves. Five years ago, publishers were chomping at the bit to license the next “Solo Leveling”. But with handful of failed licenses and titles that havean’t cleared warehouses, print publishers are taking a more measured stance.

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Silver Ticket or Silver Bullet

Onscreen adaptations have been a mixed bag.

Studio N, Naver’s film licensing division dedicated to turning their digital hits into… well, digital hits with moving pictures.

Specifically with K-dramas.

“Teach You a Lesson”, “All of Us are Dead” and "Bloodhounds” have all done well while Kakao Entertainment had one of the earliest hits with “Business Proposal” being a major level-up for the Korean enteratinment industry as a whole. “Itaewon Class” likewise hit hard and heavy, but neither IP amounted to more than a flash in the pan. Yes, throngs of fans watched each new episode. No, there was no wave of merchandising or licensing that came after.

“Solo Leveling” is in a similar, albeit different, situation.

The anime is undeniably popular, bringing new audiences into the webtoon market and infusing life into the already dominant action-fantasy genre. But thanks to licensing rights going to Japanese investors on the anime… it’s unlikely that REDICE or Kakao have many rights to licensing or merchandising.

While audience acclaim might be a worthwhile goal… it’s hard to say that any K-drama adaptations of webtoon IPs have been anything more than one-hit wonders before fading into the streaming catalogue.

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Short-Form Gold

Earlier today, Mashable put up a post proudly proclaiming “WEBTOON is turning 6 fan-favorite webcomics into microdramas”.

Short-form content (because I refuse to call them microdramas) is, of course, the next frontier of easily digestible and endlessly monetizable digital gold. The way it was pitched to me was that short-form is the motion picture version of webtoons. And that is in no way an accident.

“We actually just borrowed a lot of the webtoon model from content publishing to monetization” is literally what was told to me by the CEO of one of Korea’s short-form platforms.

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Not that webtoons are unique in this sense, after all anime audiences have had similar gripes for years thanks to the isekai sub-genre that’s taken over the industry there.

But producing anime has long been an expensive endeavor. And while indie projects occasionally rise to the challenge, the animation industry as a whole doesn’t have much in the form of competition from smaller platforms or studios.

Webtoons, on the other hand, are semi-fucked in this regard… but that’s a topic for another time.

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Are Webtoon Platforms Indie-Unfriendly?

No one in the webtoon can argue against one unassailable fact: romance fantasy and action fantasy genre titles are the biggest moneymakers in the market.

Yes, BLs and romance titles still have eager and paying fanbases, but mainstream audiences are obssessed with heroes wielding swords while leveling up or female protagonists living in Victorian Anglia.

And these are the two genres that independent creatives are locked out of.

The reasons are entirely practical. These titles require effects artists, costume designers, and fabric designers on top of the regular inkers, colorists, typesetters and so on. The production schedule of most top-tier webtoons is a month per episode, with each department taking a week, but working on a staggered schedule so that a new episode can be published every week.

And practically speaking, indie creators can’t compete.

Now take a look at the front page of any webtoon platform and what do you see?

Webtoon platforms and publishers aren’t unfriendly to indie titles, but the fact of the matter is that high-polish action fantasy and romance fantasy titles are where the money is at. And indie creators can’t compete with studios in that regard.

So, if independent webtoon creators aren’t finding traction on webtoon platforms, where are they going?

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Back on the Gram

Every year, the Korean government sponsors a white paper that tracks multiple metrics in the Korean manhwa industry (webtoons included). One topic is always the mediums on which readers choose to read their webtoon content.

The top five platforms shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Naver Webtoon, KakaoPage, Kakao Webtoon, and Naver Series. But the fifth… Instagram. A whopping 13.6% of people surveyed listed Instagram as one of the top 3 media platforms on which they read webtoons. That beat out actual webtoon platforms like Lezhin, Toptoon, Ridi, Toomics and Manhwa-kyung (a defunct platform that no longer exists).

It got “worse” the next year in 2024 when Instagram rose to 4th in the charts, outranking all the previously mentioned platforms as well as Kakao Webtoon. Now, Kakao Webtoon might be a nearly defunct platform, but it traces its lineage back to Daum Webtoon which literally outranked Naver Webtoon at one point.

In 2025’s white paper, the rankings held steady but the % of respondents who said Instagram was one of their top 3 platforms to read webtoons on grew 3%. And it wasn’t long before we got an industry term for these titles: “instatoons”.

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The Rise of Instatoons

Now, it is a false equivalency to say that Instagram is publishing webtoons in the same vein as Naver or Kakao because most of the content on Instagram tends to be shorter, slice-of-life and comedy comics. In the west, it’s the kind of content we’re used to seeing on Instagram.

But it’s important to remember that 4-cut comics and slice-of-life stories were once the bread and butter of webtoon platforms.

The first waves of webtoon titles were intensely personal and stylized. It’s impossible not to think of Sound of Your Heart or Soonjeong Manhwa when thinking of the first generation, but also Itaewon Class and Bloodhound which are completely unpolished when stood next to more recent launches.

In Korea, instatoons are a return to those highly stylized and eclectic forms of storytelling. They’re a direct response to the perfectly rendered titles that dominate the webtoon charts on mainstream platforms.

And because Instagram doesn’t allow for direct monetization, instatoons instead focus on building brands and audiences. Considering this was how the first generation of webtoon titles operated on Naver and Daum… we’ve essentially just gone back in time.

Time will tell if instatoons will find ways to be profitable and sustainable, but without significant support from platforms and publishers, independent creators don’t have much of a choice.

The webtoon industry hasn’t had the same cycle in western markets where it’s still considered niche or even a secondary content market compared to established western comics or Japanese manga.

But the grumbling is certainly growing louder.

WEBTOON’s promotion (or lack thereof) of the Canvas platform has been controversial for indie creators and studios ever since the CANVAS Creator Rewards Program was phased out back in 2023 (leading to lower payouts for creators).

It’s a significant shift from pre-COVID when CANVAS and Tapas’ indie sections were alive and thriving. But with the shift towards sales and profits, there’s a massive vacuum that WEBTOON and Tapas used to occupy.

And we know how nature feels about vacuums.

It was sometime around my second year at Lezhin when my career at the company was looking unstable. The US team was bigger than ever, about 10 people up from the initial number of 5 and you could feel that the size was getting ungainly.

The Japan team, on the other hand, had been at 8 members and stuck at that number for the majority of my time at Lezhin, even after I was put in charge of the US service.

Whereas we were brash, aggressive and always trying to push boundaries, the Japan team was generally quiet. Focused heavily on quality translations, quality titles, and balanced campaigns.

It didn’t help that we were the only two teams on the 6th floor with two rows of empty desks between us. The US team would come back from lunch, loud and complaining about finishing out work for the day while the Japanese team would smile and whisper amongst themselves.

It was almost laughably stereotypical, a fact that wasn’t lost on us.

Eventually, that US “can-do” attitude spun a bit out of control and I found myself on the outs of the team I had been with for nearly 2 years at that point. It was a bit dizzing, how quickly I found myself (and my career) in deep waters.

And then, surprisingly, I found myself operating under the banner of Lezhin Japan.

My Brief Stint with Lezhin Japan

Michael Song, Business Development Specialist, Lezhin Japan Biz Dev Team

I want to specify that I did not, nor have I ever, worked in the Japanese market. I’ve worked with Japanese companies, licensed Japanese content, and occasionally speak with Japanese creatives, but I have never licensed content into the Japanese market because I have no idea what Japanese audiences are interested in.

My team, however, did.

I was placed on a team with the former head of JP operations (team lead) and his editorial lead (my coworker). They were working on, among other initiatives, expanding Lezhin’s footprint in the Japanese market. Whereas other teams were working on licensing Japanese content for the Korean market, my team was licensing content into the Japanese market. Specifically, on platforms other than Lezhin Japan.

It was a strange place to be.

We were, in some ways, actively competing with the Lezhin platform’s businesses by licensing titles to competing platforms and comparing the revenue streams of both.

By this time, Lezhin had been operating in the US and Japan for 4 and 5 years. The business were stalled, revenues had hit a ceiling, and the decision was made not only to employ a “red” biz dev team, but to empower them beyond the means offered to the “blue” platform teams.

For my part, my time outside of LezhinUS lasted only about a year before I was brought back into the fold. I’d increased the number of licensing sources, brought up the number of new launches, and signed new exclusive titles from overseas creatives. It wasn’t long before I was heading up the entirety of content on LezhinUS and taking on the role of “publisher”.

Lezhin Japan’s Biz Dev experiment ended less successfully with both members eventually leaving Big Red and heading out of the webtoon industry. The last thing I heard, my coworker was still in Korea working for Adobe while our boss had moved to Japan to work for a major Japanese publisher.

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Goodbye LZJP

While Lezhin Japan’s site is slated to shut down, some of the content will be ported over to its sister platform, BeLToon. It’s bittersweet knowing that Lezhin Japan’s platform with be shutting down and being merged with BeLToon.

Over the years, I have to admit that I never agreed with many of the Japanese business’ operational strategies. And the drive to launch BeLToon, a BL-focused webtoon platform, seemed… stupid. Not just because Lezhin Japan was already a major player in Japan’s BL market, but because focusing on male adult while, internationally, the Lezhin brand name was becoming synonymous with the BL genre was (and I’m summoning all of my powers as a wordsmith here) stupid.

But I can find consolation in the fact that Lezhin Japan’s closure comes after multiple attempts by multiple iterations of teams and individuals who believed in trying something new.

And I find even more consolation in the fact that I believe Kidari will, eventually, rename BeLtoon to Lezhin Japan anyway.

And then I can write a post on LinkedIn saying I called it all those many months ago.

The Lezhin Japan story actually calls into question what users are actually buying when they make purchases on webtoon platforms.

While the platform’s operations will be combined with BeLToon, users have to request their accounts and points be ported over to the newer platform. And, worse still, as BeLToon and Lezhin Japan had two separate libraries, some of the purchased content won’t be available on BeLToon.

Meaning those titles will have to be repurchased if the users want to re-read them. Likely on other platforms altogether.

Which, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, is getting all kinds of hate on socials.

And it caused me to ask myself a question that I’ve been avoiding for a while now: what’s next to go wrong with the webtoon industry?

More is better, until it’s not. And now, it’s definitely not.

One of the biggest advances in the Korean webtoon industry was scaling and speedrunning translation/typesetting for the hundreds of titles month into a variety of languages. This means it’s cheaper and easier than ever for webtoon studios to have their titles translated into English, Spanish, French, Thai, German, Japanese, Chinese and more.

But that also means we’re getting HUNDREDS of webtoons pushed into each foreign market. The English market went from ~60 new titles split between Tapas, WEBTOON, Lezhin and Tappytoon a month to 40 new launches on each platform.

Previously, it was possible for audiences and fandoms to focus on specific genres or titles without resorting to piracy . But now, with 30 new BLs and 20 new action fantasies being launched each month all at top-tier art, any past concerns of content cannibalization have become a reality.

Not to mention the piracy problem…

It’s time to stop pretending piracy is solely a criminal issue.

Hard truths, folks.

The same users who are pirating webtoons are likely the ones using the official apps. Some might even be paying for some titles or using the “free Coins” offers to unlock paid episodes.

And, yes, there are bad actors who are screwing up the calculus for publishers, platforms and creatives. But launching thousands of new titles a year, increasing the hurdles required to read content (upping prices), and sticking ads everywhere except login pages isn’t helping.

Pre-COVID, the argument that piracy was soley a criminal issue was a feasible one. Especially in foreign markets where the bulk of pirated titles were scanlated. But it’s 2026 and most pirate sites are hosting official JPEGS, just screenshotted from official platforms.

The webtoon industry has tried to surpass every obstacle and overcome every hurdle with one key strategy: growth.

But piracy is the one hurdle that’ll only get worse with growth and it’s time to face the issue head on. We all know that knocking down pirate sites and prosecuting bad actors is a whack-a-mole game. So it’s time to find another solution.

“Korea-First” Strategies are Done

I feel like it’s an obvious one, but considering the historic repeats of this same problem, it’s worth repeating.

Let me be perfectly clear: many of the successes borne by the webtoon industry result from the use of Korean content publishing, marketing, and platform strategies in a western market where the competition was years behind.

Weekly publishing? Yes. Millions of dollar poured into online marketing channels? Of course. Massive discounts and the publishing of free episodes to lure in an unsuspecting audience of content-hungry tweens? Bread and butter.

But for every success, there have been massive failures. Toptoon is publishing AI-videos to empty chairs (TOPCO Media Jumps into Adult AI Animation), Toomics’ big AI webtoon push led nowhere (Soosung Webtoons: Betting Big on AI), and everyone ruined the French webtoon market for years to come (Is the Webtoon Market Shrinking?).

It’s happened enough that the failures of the industry outside of Asia outnumber the successes. And now it’s time to face a simple truth, pretending that a Korea-first strategy is still viable is like believing in Santa.

Adapting to foreign markets and local conditions is going to be necessary to build user loyalty and transform that into retention.

The Manga Problem (aka the Manga Solution)

Now to talk about Japan or, more appropriately, the international juggernaut of manga and anime being distributed international through local agencies, publishers, and platforms after decades of service. A lot of Korean companies like to compare themselves to Japan publishers and, while it wasn’t farfetched about six years ago, there’s a massive difference.

The international market for manga and anime is still growing. The same can’t be said for webtoons.

My biggest takeaway from Anime Expo was that no matter the digital dominance of webtoons, the manga/anime fandom isn’t just bigger, it’s loyal. Yes, manga is still consumed in droves by piracy enthusiasts and, yes, publishers are still attempting battle piracy alongside webtoon publishers.

But the manga enthusiasts have had their loyalty tested through decades of video games, artist alley fan artists, TCG games, manga apps (that open and close only to open again) and so much more.

The idea that the webtoon industry could duplicate that in months or years with a handful of cash-grabs and decent tie-ins was (and is) a pipedream. Instead of looking back five years from now and wishing that the webtoon industry had laid the foundation for future opportunities, it’s time to buckle down and put in the hard work.

That means licensing, merchandising, and multi-media projects that put content in front of people’s faces and leave lasting memories (the good kind, of course). That means putting out one-shot animated episodes that serve as proof of concept. Maybe pixel art video games that draw in dedicated fans. Or just put together enough creatives to put together a pop-up package that you can tour around the US.

Or we could just keep on pumping out episodes and hope that things just work themselves out.

While it’s easy to heap loads of the blame on one or two of the biggest platforms and publishers in Korea, these problems are found throughout the industry. Not the least in the Korean government’s own initiatives to stimulate the webtoon economy.

Whether or not the industry will implement fixes to address these issues (and others) remains to be seen. But the market will react swiftly, whether it’s to action or inaction.

Webtoons were at the forefront of the digital content wave during COVID, but they are by no means the entirety of the wave. We’ll have to see if the industry can ride out the flood or if more companies and offices will drawn in the turbulence.

One of my favorite webtoons that I started reading early on in my career was Ultimate Outcast (최강왕따) on Lezhin. It was also one of the first webtoons I was tasked with editing the English translation for.

The story of a bullied student rising through the ranks of his high school and defeating bigger and stronger students in shonen-style combat was immensely satisfying to read.

Then, I realized it was a whole sub-genre in webtoons.

The “hagwon” (school) genre of webtoons primarily deals with students dealing with life in the high-stress environment that is high school in Korea. Early hagwon webtoons focused on high school romance, drama, and the high-stakes of the CSAT (college entrance exams that are given only once a year).

But hagwon-action titles? They were all about bullying.

Weak Hero and Lookism are key examples of hagwon action titles, focusing on student protagonists who learn to fight back or take advantage of the broken education system in Korea. Basically, while students might be the villains of the story, they’re also the heroes.

At least, they used to be.

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Won’t Someone Think of the Children

It might sound trite, but the Korean government has actually been quite active when it comes to combating the bullying epidemic in Korea. And while you might think that teachers are the solution to the current crisis, for a while they were considered the problem.

Back in 2010, Seoul announced one of the biggest shifts to Korean education with the passage of laws explicitly outlawing corporal punishment. While physically punishing students was (sort of) frowned upon in Korea until that point, it was entirely legal.

This was followed by enforcement laws which caused a seismic shift across the entirety of South Korea. It’s important to remember that pre-2010, corporal punishment wasn’t just a thing. It was the thing.

In a recent survey by the conservative Korean Federation of Teachers’ Association on teachers in Seoul, nearly 70 percent of the respondents said corporal punishment is needed at schools. The teachers’ group also filed a petition to the ministry to legislate a law which permits corporal punishment under limited circumstances.

It wasn’t long before other regions moved to follow suit and this regional ban became a blanket ban officially outlawing the use of corporal punishment in educational institutions.

The removal of corporal punishment wasn’t just a step forward for student rights, it was a control measure placed on faculty and staff at educational institutions. The government drew a line and put severe legal consequences in place if anyone crossed it.

And then the next shoe dropped.

Article 9 of the South Korean Criminal Act specifically protects minors between the ages of 10 and 14 from criminal prosecution in violent crimes. Instead of jail time, their criminal records are sealed (as minors) and they are sentenced to community service or reformation programs.

Yep. Middle-school students can smoke, drink, fight, steal, and commit a host of other crimes and face no criminal prosecution.

As a result of Article 9 becoming common knowledge, crimes involving juvenile offenders have surged across Korea. The number of criminal offenders rose to 21,958 in 2025 from 10,026 in 2021. Notably, sex crimes rose to 1,268 from 818 (Chosun Daily).

Worse still? The number of criminal reoffenders for juveniles aged 10 to 14 was between 12 and 13%. Nearly triple the rate for adults.

Not only are more children committing more crimes, they’re returning to commit more crimes at higher rates than adults. Shit.

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Teach Them a Lesson

That’s where “Get Schooled” comes in. Or maybe I should call it “Teach You a Lesson” which is the name of the live-action adaptation currently on Netflix.

For those who haven’t watched it, the story takes place in a South Korea where campus violence has grown out of control. In response, an educational bureau is established to use any and all methods to discipline students and reform schools.

Basically, a bad-ass adult goes around kicking the snot out of high school kids.

I’m not kidding. The main character is a fully-grown adult and the trailers immediately show him beating on uniformed high school students.

If hagwon action titles were wish-fulfillment for a younger generation that grew up at a time when teachers and authority figures turned a blind-eye to bullying, then these new stories are wish-fulfillment for a generation of authority figures who have no recourse to stop the bullying that remains prevalent to this day.

It’s immediately reflective of a living and breathing society issue that no one has a solution to.

And… that’s pretty cool.

More than anything, “Teach You a Lesson” (and it’s webtoon counterpart, “Get Schooled”) are a reminder that Korea excels at telling stories that reflect societal ills. And that, often times, these stories are compelling to audiences around the world.

I highly recommend watching the K-drama. It’s actually quite good (so far) and while the story is quite pointed and doesn’t present much depth, at the very least it’s dumb fun.

I should note that the translated versions of “Get Schooled” (the original webtoon) have been removed from many of Naver’s platforms due to depictions of a black character and racial slurs. It’s pretty shit and I can’t say I’m surprised Naver let the series continue in Korea, but then deleted it from international platforms.

And I assume that’s why the Netflix adaptation is called “Teach You a Lesson” in order to distance itself from the controversial webtoon.

I haven’t watched the entire series yet, but I assume the House of Tudum left that particular story out.

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And that was after HiAnime was placed on the US Government’s watchlist (IMDb), not that this was a recent develoment.

Likewise, here in Korea there’s been a lot of progress in the war against webtoon and webnovel piracy.

Back in March, a civil sentence against the operator of “Ajitoon” (a Korean webtoon and webnovel pirate site) was upheld whereby they have been ordered to pay 2 billion KRW in damages to Kakao and Naver (AsiaE) after they’d been sentenced to 2 years in prison.

More recently, the biggest webtoon and webnovel pirate in Korea, Newtokki announced they would shut down after a court order back in April (Chosun Biz). And now that we’re getting to June, we’re starting to see what kind of impact the shutdown of Newtokki has had on the Korean industry.

Never heard of Newtokki? I kind of figured.

Let’s Look at Newtokki. And Manatokki. And Bamtokki.

Newtokki, one of Korea’s biggest webtoon/manga/webnovel pirate sites, voluntarily shut down on April 27th. It was the latest and largest iteration of the “Bamtokki” pirate sites, a previously operational pirate site that popularized the “-tokki” moniker’s use in Korean piracy.

The shutdown preceded the implementation of an amendment to Korea’s Copyright Act which would’ve fast-tracked the blocking of illegal sites and strengthened punishments for copyright violators with up to seven years in prison or fines up to 100 million KRW.

The shutdown was punctuated with an announcement that Newtokki, Manatokki, and Booktokki would all be shutting down at midnight on April 27th and all user data would be deleted immediately.

But, in the aftermath, at least four new pirate sites were spotted using the “-tokki” moniker and claiming to the successors to the Newtokki site (Chosun Biz). And, while the shutdown of the original Newtokki site was indeed a success for creatives, recent reports have stated that the new system implemented by the amendment of the Copyright Act hasn’t worked as intended.

By opening new domains after old addresses are blocked and maintaining users via Telegram, the operation of pirate sites is certainly more troublesome, but by no means is it impossible.

In short, we whacked a mole. It was a big mole. Now, there are more moles.

Cause, Meet Effect.

The closure of Korea’s single largest piracy group has had an effect, one readily visible to even indie creators.

Earlier this month, Money Today highlighted a quote from Hyun-wook, a webtoon creator here in South Korea who’s been publishing titles since 2009, long enough to have been around prior to the international boom and the massive domestical surge before webtoon studios took over the mainstream market.

Specifically, multiple news outlets have focused in on the following tweet.

In his tweet, Hyun-wook went on to explain that his paid revenue increased by three times month-on-month after [Newtokki] (erroneously referred to as Bamtokki in the tweet) was shut down.

Not long after, a webnovel author added their own two cents saying that their revenue had increased by 2.5 times over.

Both of these tweets should be taken in context.

First, Hyun-wook’s titles are from an earlier generation of webtoon titles. And while they were popular in their day, they are not top-tier titles. An increase in revenue, while important, may not represent a significant pattern across the industry.

Secondly… I can’t find any evidence of the retweeting webnovel author’s works or whether they have paid content available on the internet. While it’s no doubt possible that they do, without any actual evidence it’s hard to put any stock in the quote.

And while I can’t vouch for these experiences… I can vouch for another.

Rewind to 2021

One of more comprehensive articles on the topic of webtoon piracy was published back in 2021 by Anime News Network.

The post followed a period of piracy upheaval during which English webtoon piracy sites were (a) shutting down or (b) finding themselves undergoing extended outages.

It was at this time that Anime News Network pulled together interviews and quotes from webtoon creators on Twitter and emailed responses from publishers, most notably Lezhin Comics.

I know I said comprehensive earlier, but the post was lacking in teeth. There are a few numbers thrown around, but nothing that’s damning or gives the context of scale when discussing the effect of piracy on the webtoon industry.

The best that Lezhin could muster as far as a “damning quote” was the following:

“When one of the biggest piracy sites in North America shut down for two weeks, we saw an increase in our own numbers.”

Just… ugh.

I’ve read that quote a handful of times and it annoys the hell out of me each time. And for good reason. I helped write the damned thing.

For context, at the time of Anime News Network’s article, I was head of US publishing at Lezhin and working as the de facto PR manager. I wrote press releases, made contacts with webtoon blogs, and eventually took over the TikTok and Twitter accounts for LezhinUS.

But at the exact time that Anime News Network was publishing their post, I was writing an internal memo about the outage of a prominent webtoon piracy site and the increase in revenue we saw sitewide.

It wasn’t just one or two titles performing above average, it was multiple titles and entire genres shifting upwards in ways that literally millions of dollars in marketing couldn’t.

The biggest webtoon pirate site in the US shut down for 2 weeks in 2021 and webtoon publishers had a peek at what the market could look like. Maybe even should.

I can’t say the exact numbers, obviously. A mixture of NDA and time prevent me from being too open or even remembering the exact figures. I can say that the market looked unrecognizable during that short two week period.

So does piracy hurt the webtoon industry?

It’s a simple question with a complicated answer. But if we’re boiling it down to brass tacks, the answer is really simple.

Yes, it does. A fuckton.

There’s the Kakao rule which says that main characters need to hook the reader in the first 10 panels. The goal being that readers become so enraptured in the character that the story and setting just become vehicles for the MC to react to and inhabit.

Then there’s the sex rule in adult titles. Generally, you need an explicitly erotic scene in the first episode. The earlier, the better. And if you’re delaying it (to the end of the episode), you need to make sure there are allusions throughout that act as promises to the reader that it is indeed coming (ew).

But there’s the unwritten rule. The one that’s a given, no matter what genre or character you’re working with.

Your story needs stakes.

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Build Your Foundation (Quickly)

Stakes are the consequences that the character will face if they fail to meet their goal (roll credits).

It’s a simple concept, but it’s importance should be immediate. Without stakes, the conflicts, relationships and scenes all lose their weight. And in webtoons, the stakes are set in a way that the consequences will be immediate.

For example, I want to drive and keep my bus over 50 mph because I want to get through my route quickly. The stakes if I fail are… I failed my goal but nothing really happens.

But what if there’s a bomb attached to my bus?

Now, I stil want to keep my bus over 50 mph even if the reason has changed. And the stakes if I fail? The bomb explodes killing me and everyone else riding onboard.

Clear and immediate.

Setting up the stakes quickly (and efficiently) will do a lot of the heavy lifting when introducing characters, settings, and conflicts. Having the reader know the stakes ahead of time will immediately introduce a major conflict which will stick with the reader throughout the story until it is resolved.

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You Want Examples? Sure.

Let’s start with some easy ones.

Solo Leveling introduces Sung Jinwoo, the world’s weakest hunter. The first episode starts with him, covered in blood and facing off against giant stone warriors. The webtoon doesn’t have to tell us anything, his life is at stake.

They don’t get much bigger than that!

But that’s just the first story arc. From there, Jinwoo gets the ability to level up and grow more powerful so the stakes change. Eventually, he goes on a quest to heal his mother who’s in a coma. Or rescue other hunters from overwhelming odds. And on and on.

As the main character gets more and more powerful, the stakes shift from affecting him directly to encompassing his circle of friends and loved ones. And in order to progress, he doesn’t just have to be strong enough to save himself, but the whole world.

Tears on a Withered Flower is a different case altogether. Instead of setting up stakes or a conflict, it builds the main character first. You follow an attractive woman through a day of working one part-time job after another until you learn the truth: her husband dug them both deep into debt and now she has to work to pay it off. And right before the first episode ends, we meet a handsome man who buys flowers from her.

It’s a bit of a thinker. Her husband is a dirtbag loser and her life doesn’t seem like much. The handsome stranger that comes floating into her life could be a lifeline, the start of something new and an escape from a hell of her husband’s making.

Or not. Or it could be something worse.

What’s at stake? Possibly her current life which might be imperfect, but there’s the possibility of things getting better. Maybe even her marriage which might be at a low point, but reconciliation is possible.

Haesu is risking her current life, her marriage, and what little stability she has by starting a relationship with Taeha. And eventually, when that grows, she risks her husband’s anger and violence.

But she’s also risking hope.

Think about the last time you applied for a job you really wanted and was turned down. Or maybe even asked someone on a date? There’s that initial twinge of hopelessness that follows. That spark of anger or annoyance that makes you wonder why you bothered in the first place.

Maybe you didn’t realize you were feeling hopeful before, but you sure feel it when it’s gone.

Without Stakes, You’re in the Wind

Stakes keep your story grounded. Without them, conflicts only have the meaning you ascribe them in the moment. And, yes, good writers can ascribe a lot of meaning to conflicts, but having pre-existing stakes beforehand does some of the heavylifting and keeps your story consistent.

Writing a story with two students who are in conflict could be interesting. But what if they live in a world where everyone tells the truth? What if one of the two students has the ability to lie? And what if he’s slowly coming to suspect that the other boy has discovered his secret?

One of the hallmarks of webtoons is introducing stakes for the main character in the first episode. This gives future conflicts, even simple ones that might normally be considered filler, more weight and substance.

It’s also the reason why webtoon titles out of Korea tend to stick to specific tropes or subgenres like safety blankets. BLs often set social stakes, discovery of one’s homosexuality leading to the loss of one’s job, social status and so on. Meanwhile, office romances set up professional stakes.

If you’re reading (or writing) a webtoon and you feel like the conflicts are too flighty, too inconsequential, then it might be the stakes. Or the lack thereof.

On the one hand, Wallstreet’s disappointment could be keenly felt when the stock prices dropped about 15% to $11.24 with a lot of news outlets focusing on the operating loss in Q1 or the narrowing of that loss based on their revenue.

The Q1 is full of interesting insights, but I’m going to limit myself to three points. These are continuations of the challenges that WEBTOON has faced over the past few years and, I expect, will continue to be a thorn in their side until they’re dealt with.

International Growing Pains (Without Much Growth)

Media outlets in Korea have honed in on WEBTOON’s operating losses for Q1 because… well, because that’s the most obvious takeaway from the financial report.

My take is a bit more nuanced, but amounts to the same. Having worked at two webtoon platforms, seeing a drop in Q1 isn’t a surprise. But where the hit is coming from and where it’s being seen concerns me.

Total revenue of $320.9 million declined 1.5%, driven by declines in IP Adaptations and Advertising, partially offset by growth in Paid Content.

Year-on-year, WEBTON saw a 1.5% drop in overall revenue from 2025. And that alone isn’t a massive issue considering that Q1 is a difficult time for the webtoon industry as a whole. Coming off the heels of the holiday season, a shrink in spending is to be expected and keeping the YoY within 5% isn’t bad considering,

Korea actually saw growth with 86.88 million USD (12.8%) in revenue with the Rest of World clocking in at 35.368 million USD (7.8% YoY). But the Japanese market shrank by 7.5% YoY to 139.182 million USD.

Until Q4, Japan’s paid content revenue grew consistently throughout 2025. And while this past quarter’s 7.8% shrink in paid content revenue represents a hitch in that step, it’s a big hitch.

The Japanese market was long considered the biggest market for the webtoon industry. And if WEBTOON has peaked there, then all that’s left is to fight it out with comic books and movies in the west and mangas in the east. Basically, the age of expansion is over and it’s all red ocean from here.

Stretching the CANVAS to the Breaking Point

Under normal circumstances, I might expect WEBTOON’s latest updates to their CANVAS analytics to result in a new boom to creativity and the amateur webtoon market which would in turn give WEBTOON the momentum to turn the flywheel just a little bit further.

There was a period of time when webtoons could’ve been the medium of choice for storytelling and short-form content. And WEBTOON was at the forefront with comics like Blue Chair, Let’s Play, and Lore Olympus.

It’s been a string of mistakes, one after another since that has eroded the webtoon creator market outside of Asia. It doesn’t help that WEBTOON has no other compatriots in this space promoting the creator market. Tapas has long since abandoned the endeavor since they were bought out by Kakao leaving a one-party system.

I would argue that the golden area of webtoons only existed because there were so many amateur creators promoting the platforms, publishers, and stories outside of Asia. And as those creators are moving on to other mediums, so is that attention.

Is it a good thing that WEBTOON is promoting CANVAS and providing updates to the platform? Absolutely.

But it’s 2026 and the phrase “too little, too late” comes to mind.

In order for WEBTOON to truly win over the hearts and minds of independent creators, they need to do something besides add in features that would’ve been outdated in 2023.

Side Note: Fix Your Socials, WEBTOON

I’m sure someone at WEBTOON has noticed, but their social media needs fixing. It’s not the marketing or organic advertising promoting their platform that needs direction, but their creator outreach.

Drip feeding content to potential creators is incredibly 2020. There’s an actual opportunity to give creators feedback and promote gems across an audience of millions, but they… haven’t. And it’s disappointing.

The Flywheel Exists, Just Not Here

The flywheel in this case being the IP flywheel strategy that gets called out by most western content and IP companies. The Korean equivalent is OSMU (one-source, multi-use) which highlights using a single IP and adapting it to multiple mediums.

The flywheel, on the other hand, is contingent on additional factors like licensing, merchandising, and secondary derivatives. The best example is Disney and their catalogues TV shows, movies, and parks along with the books, merchandising and licensing based on each.

“We are pleased to share our solid first quarter results with constant currency revenue of $326.4 million, in line with our expectations, and a significant Adjusted EBITDA increase of 132% year-over year. Importantly, we are continuing to strategically invest across our flywheel. We remain focused on expanding our creator ecosystem, and will introduce major updates to our amateur CANVAS platform throughout the year, positioning us well to produce even more diverse content that our users love.”

I’ll be honest, I was pleasantly surprised to see the term “flywheel” used instead of “OSMU”. And Naver’s commitment to capitalizing on their IPs seems honest with their contributions to each year’s World Webtoon Festival not to mention the comments by Kim Young-soo about developing “Disney-level” mega IPs (Chosun Biz).

But the fact that the biggest comics publisher in the world is still looking for new IPs to develop into mega IPs makes you wonder if they know what a mega IP is.

WEBTOON isn’t alone in their goal of developing IPs and expanding them beyond the webtoon and webnovel markets. But the number of failures to do so by Korean companies could fill the length of modern Korean history.

Sorry, let me rephrase that.

The number of failures to develop IPs and expand them beyond their initial media literally fills the length of modern Korean history.

Author’s Note: I’m going to be honest here. I feel a bit uncomfortable saying the next part of this out loud because I still work in the webtoon industry and Korean content industry. For that reason alone, I’ve paywalled the next part of the article. Apologies.

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Pre-COVID, the goal for webtoons was to monetize internationally while looking for adaptations in the live action media space, specifically K-dramas. And when live action adaptations proved to be unreliable or untenable, the shift turned to anime and video games before eventually landing on the idea of short-form video content.

Lezhin is currently at the forefront of short-form adaptations of webtoons with Lezhin Snack currently available internationally on the iOS and Android markets (more on that here).

And, of course, Naver’s Cuts program has been in full swing for nearly a year. Kakao hasn’t launched it yet, but they’ve been promoting short ads built with their Helix AI system and RIDI has their short-form drama app, Kanta, which is currently active in Japan.

And now, the only webtoon conglomerate which hasn’t officially joined the short-form race has announced their own take on webtoon-adaptations for the mobile markets.

A New Wave of Anime (?)

Kakao Piccoma announced on May 9th that they’ll be launching an “Anime” category on their Japanese platform (Yonhap News). This tab will host short-form videos adapted from the webtoons and manga currently on available on Piccoma Japan.

It should be noted that the article specifically includes “Japanese manga and webtoon”. And while there have been plenty of manga and anime adapted by Hollywood for western audiences (Dragonball Evolution comes to mind… involuntarily, of course), the possibility of Kakao Piccoma using their established content translation pipeline to distribute a new wave of anime could change the game.

A Road to Riches (or Nowhere)

Of course, it could just be another pipedream.

The idea of animated webtoons mirrors Naver’s own push into this sub-genre with Cuts, the short-form animated content currently available on the WEBTOON app. While there aren’t any numbers on how animated short-form videos are performing on WEBTOON, it’s worth noting that the introduction of short-form content hasn’t prevently the quarterly decline in numbers.

And if that weren’t enough, there’s the AI of it all.

We’ve already seen what AI is capable of with Toptoon’s foray into adult webtoon AI animation (oof, that’s a mouthful… ew). While AI-powered animation may be a possibility in the future, recent endeavors have proven that it’s no replacement for actual animation.

But it remains to be seen whether Piccoma’s Anime tab is the stuff of dreams or just another death rattle as webtoon platforms attempt to stay relevant in a fast changing world.

So, without further ado, here are three major shifts that have come to define the modern webtoon market. And maybe three more that are likely to shift it further.

Paid Content

The first is the introduction of microtransactions to the webtoon industry by Lezhin Comics back in 2013. Until this point, webtoons were generally free and hosted by search engines like Naver and Daum.

The introduction of paid content (a) allowed webtoon platforms to invest more funding into publishing and marketing now that there was a direct financial incentive to doing so and (b) kicked off a talent search for webtoon creatives leading to a golden age in the webtoon industry.

More financial competition meant that creatives could negotiate terms leading to bidding wars and better practices in the Korean market. With millions of dollars in play, this also brought in government oversight leading to official reviews of publication and contracting practices.

While such safeguards would’ve eventually come to the webtoon industry, the scale of revenues being generated in the industry certainly increased the pace.

The Move to the Studio System

Prior to 2018, the vast majority of webtoons were being produced by independent creators either solo or in small teams. Currently, nearly all AAA-projects are studio-based with tens of creatives working together to produce high-quality titles.

This not only increased the budget for webtoon production, but it made high quality art par for the course changing the landscape of webtoons. What started as an industry of indie creators telling deeply personal stories has blown up into a multi-billion dollar industry full of polished works vying for the top spot.

The downside is the lack of independent works in the market now. Studio-backing comes with strings, usually in the form of IP ownership. The current studio system in Korea is similar to the anime production pipeline in Japan wherein the individual creator (usually a webnovel author) who started the IP loses control and ownership of the IP in exchange for highly-rendered webtoon production.

And, with hundreds of thousands of dollars at risk in production, the industry has shifted to stable revenue generating stories rather than experimental and highly personal storytelling. In other words, a lot of romance fantasy and action fantasy titles.

While the move to studio-production isn’t the sole reason for the current era of webtoon “sameness”, it is one of the biggest factors in keeping it going.

It’s a Small World After All

Finally, we have the expansion and failures of the international market. Naver WEBTOON, Lezhin Comics, and Tapas are three of the biggest overseas names in webtoons operated by Korean companies.

But for each success, there are multiple failures like Piccoma Europe and Pocket Comics not to mention KDKD (Lezhin’s NFT platform), Peanutoon, and KTOON in Korea.

Post-COVID, webtoon publishers and platforms wanted to spread to each corner of the planet and replicate the successes of the North American market only to find that you couldn’t copy-paste business strategies across cultural lines.

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The Future

So, where are we going?

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I learned pretty quickly that copywriting in Korea starts with the Korean copy. But where you end is copy in English that has to stand on its own in the international market.

The same was true for subtitles. It needed to read like dialogue, not like translation of dialogue. No one wanted to read “Please understand our situation” when “This is the best we can do” would be better.

When I eventually found work as a webtoon translation PM, everything I’d learned from subtitling and copywriting came into play. Luckily, the webtoon translation field was still in its early stages and everyone was still shaping how webtoons should look and feel.

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First (Unsteady) Steps

My first week at Big Red, I was assigned four webtoon titles. One was a new launch that was scheduled to publish in two weeks while the other three were existing titles that had been publishing in English anywhere from three months to a year. The next week, I got another three titles. The week after, another three.

Until that point, I’d never translated, much less edited, a webtoon in my life. By the end of the second month, I’d be editing one new launch every week with about four episodes edited and uploaded every day. By the end of the first quarter, that number was closer to 5 or 6 for a total of 25 to 30 episodes a week.

Deep end of the pool mentality. Absolutely mental in hindsight.

That first year included working on weekends, staying at the office until 11 PM, and working from the car during my rehearsal dinner the night before my wedding. I started at the same time as another colleague and when the team started to expand, we were adamant that the next set of webtoon translation editors start slower.

“Give them two titles the first week,” we said.

“They’re going to need time to adjust to the breakneck speed we work at,” we reasoned.

“No one’s going to stick around if you try to replicate our training schedule,” we warned.

It worked better, at least I think so.

The next set of editors worked up to 5 titles in the first month and only launched up to 2 titles a month for the first three months. It still felt fast, I’m sure, considering they were eventually in charge of 10+ titles within three months. But it gave them time to read and understand stories in order to do the best we could to translate and localize the webtoon titles.

The official job title for translation editors is “Project Manager”, or PM. You can find them at webtoon platforms, webtoon translation companies and publishers. In the first generation of webtoon publishing, PMs were responsible for the final product (the product being the final manuscripts which were uploaded to servers). That meant checking the translation, typesetting and design to make sure that (a) the episode was translated properly and (b) none of the original designs were “damaged” during the typesetting process.

In ideal cases, translators and typesetters submitted completed manuscripts that could be published as-is. And also, in those fairy tale cases, the PM was native-level fluent in the target language allowing them to perform final checks and edits as necessary.

Which, again, in ideal cases, was unnecessary.

In reality, I spent about 40 hours a week re-editing and re-typesetting webtoons during my tenure as a PM. It was everything from fixing translations, resizing bubbles, and redoing effects on typesetting. Basically, I reworked hundreds of episodes every week to read and look “better” for English native speakers. I would work on weekends to get an early start on the next week’s episodes and double-check JPEGs when they were published to make sure there were no errors on the platform-side that needed to be adjusted.

The maximum number of webtoons I edited was about 44 a week. I edited each episode with most averaging at about 25 minutes, but some taking upwards of 1 hour if the files were too large or if there was too much to edit. If episodes consistently took longer than 1 hour to edit every week, I’d start cataloging mistakes and issues in an excel sheet with screenshots to send to translators or typesetters. More often than not, it was translators. Typesetting fixes were usually 15 - 20 minutes at most.

Most PMs maxed out at 30 titles a week.

There are often other responsibilities in addition to editing webtoons including helping with copywriting, design, contracting and communicating with freelancers. Still, that was the system at Big Red that allowed for maximum publishing while still keeping a focus on quality translations.

At one point, Lezhin was, in fact, the most efficient and biggest translator of webtoon content, in the world.

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Violet’s Turning Violet

(For all the young readers or non-American folks who don’t know the provenance of the quote above, I highly recommend watching “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”. Not the Tim Burton version.)

The obvious problem with the system was scale. Assuming 5 editors, a platform would max out at ~150 webtoon titles per language. In order to grow, you would need to either (a) increase the number of translation PMs or (b) cultivate a very unhealthy work environment.

It’s one thing to have a translation team of six, but considering that Korea topped out at 15,000 new webtoons in a single year… you’d need massive teams to handle the cream of the crop.

Keep in mind that Lezhin published about 50 new launches in March 2026 and WEBTOON did 40, the only option that makes sense is that they would be hiring new PMs at a rate of 1 per month (technically 2 for Lezhin’s case).

That’s 12 per year and likely topping out at 24 just to handle Korean to English. Just to handle English and Japanese, you’re looking at 48 employees to handle internal checks for one company.

Remember how I said that Lezhin was, at one point, the biggest webtoon translation company in the world?

Lezhin is a webtoon platform and publisher that, out of necessity, had to build a massive translation team that rivaled anything else in the world. At one point, LezhinUS was publishing about 25 new titles a month and everything was being edited in-house with the support of an army of freelance translators and typesetters. That’s over 200 ongoing titles in English alone which meant a team of ~10 PMs for English not to mention 6 Japanese PMs, 2 Spanish PMs and a separate division of French and German-speaking PMs (Thai and Indonesian didn’t come until later, so I’ll leave them out).

But this was a massive drag on the system. The translation PM team (who technically weren’t supposed to be translating anything) was over 20 people who each managed 20 to 30 titles in multiple languages for a company that really wanted to focus on the publishing aspect of webtoon distribution. And it wasn’t just Lezhin, similar teams and groups existed at Naver, RIDI, Toomics, Toptoon and every other webtoon platform in Korea.

Enter the translation companies.

Instead of publishers and platforms handling the translation and typesetting for webtoons in-house, translation companies presented a cheaper and easier option for webtoon translation production. By using third-party companies, platforms could reduce payroll, increase webtoon publishing numbers, and slowly shift quality responsibilities to another company altogether.

Translation companies, on the other hand, were built specifically for translation. They developed software, cloud services, and translate at scale and developed protocols built specifically for webtoons.

Everything we PMs at webtoon publishers had cobbled together through years of trial and error were fine-tuned by the translation companies with the explicit goal of increasing translation numbers.

At its core, the system isn’t much different. PMs work with freelance translators and typesetters to complete translations for clients. But by using a multitude of software and cloud services, PMs are able to handle more titles.

Often the tagline is somewhere between 100 to 400 per PM.

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Someone Pop Violet

The tagline was nice.

But the fact that publishers and platforms could have lighter payrolls and shift away responsibilities for quality was more than enough incentive. Editors saw the potential of less overtime and easier schedules. Executives saw the possibility of removing the need for internal QC altogether.

For their part, a lot of translation companies scouted out webtoon translators that were employed by platforms and brought them onboard fast. I know a few of my favorite webtoon translators made the jump. And the PMs were essentially the same folks you’d meet at platforms, but they just happened to work at translation companies instead.

It started off pretty good.

There were hundreds of webtoons being translated each month. Just for reference KOCCA has a translation sponsorship program where the government pays for about 100 webtoon titles to be translated into foreign languages. That contract alone is worth about 800,000 USD.

The time required to translate, typeset and edito a webtoon completion was pretty much the same across the board. So then the competition was pricing. Who could price the translation costs lower, then the typesetting, then editing. Of course, the costs were passed onto freelancers. And when that wasn’t enough, then internal quality standards were removed or laxed in order to cut costs.

Translation firms took on editing jobs which reduced the need for PMs at platforms. This was a key turning point for the entire industry.

Because it wasn’t just that platforms were losing talent, it meant platforms were losing the talent required to know whether a webtoon translation was good or not.

If the translation firms could offer top-notch translations, then PMs didn’t have to be native-level fluent in target languages. They could just be familiar with English, Spanish, French and so on because the burden was on the translation company. And if there were mistakes, then the translation company would have to fix them.

But as those standards relaxed, so did quality standaards. And without native-level PMs on the platform or publishing side to review the quality, the overall quality in webtoon publishing saw a noticeable drop.

At least, I saw it.

The bigger webtoon publishing and platform companies still have a few PMs on staff, usually at least one for key languages. But they’re there for key accounts, important and popular titles that require more work and polish before publishing. Everything else gets a cursory glance, if that.

One of my major gripes with the scaled system was the lack of QC which resulted in flat translations. In an industry that focused on quantitative judgements like the number of typos, mistranslations and submitting assignments on time, more qualitative markers were left out to dry.

Which brings me to today.

When I was reading a new launch with a fun premise. What if Juliet (from Romeo and Juliet) regressed every time she died. And she kept on having to come back until she found her happy ending.

I’m a sucker for romance fantasy titles, even more so for titles that take existing classics and put a cute spin on them. After all, who wouldn’t want to revisit stories or characters that you enjoyed in a new light?

I should’ve been wondering what twists the story might take. Whether the story would be branching out beyond the Montagues and the Capulets. Whether Rosaline would play a larger role in this retelling. Maybe Paris could play a larger role in this retelling. The possibilities were endless.

Instead, I found myself wondering whether the translation could be fixed with a single pass in 20 minutes. Or whether I should take the hour and make a list to identify repetitive issues in the text.

Old habits die hard. I assume so does Juliet.

But if I’m honest, I won’t be sticking around to find out.

Troublingly, it’s hard to know whose responsibility the translation is. Is it the freelancer who is trying to complete as many assignments as possible to capitalize on their hourly rate? Or the PM at the translation firm who has 10 minutes a day to check quality? Maybe the PM at the platform who may or may not be fluent in English.

Undoubtedly, the platform wants more episodes to publish in order to capitalize on their ARPPU (average revenue per paid user). And the translation firm wants to reduce costs to increase their profits by reducing the number of quality checks required or hiring freelancers with lower hourly rates.

All the while, I sit reading a webtoon episode wondering if everyone in the production pipline hasn’t forgotten a key detail: I’m supposed to be having fun.

That’s not a predictive statement, more a summation of past and current events.

Last year, thanks to a colleage in France, I had the opportunity to talk with a publisher from a webtoon/comic/manga publisher in Europe. More than anything else, it’s always nice to meet with folks who are my counterparts in other partsof the globe.

We decided to meet at a convention held here in Seoul. I brought French-fluent colleague while the publisher was provided a translator at the convention who could speak Korean, English, French and God knows what else.

The meeting went well. I sat on the sidelines a bit as my colleague and the publisher spoke naturally in French (I got summations from the translator).

Somewhere near the end of the meeting, the translator sort of… joined the conversation. Mostly on the subject of how much translation rates had dropped in the past few years in Korea. And they blamed the webtoon industry.

Unfortunately, they were right.

There’s Words, and then there are Words

Pre-2010’s, the translation industry in Korea could be comfortably split into three arenas: entertainment, business, and literature.

Entertainment would be the subtitles for K-dramas and animations but also the scripts for those projects in the cases where they were being dubbed. You also had the rise of Youtube and online content feeding into this section of the pie which grew it significantly in the late-2010’s.

Business was a much simpler deal. These would be the meetings that required on-site translators, documents that would travel between locales, and the occasional internal media like production shorts or videos.

Finally, you had literature. Korean literature recently had a massive uptick due to Han Kang’s Nobel Prize in 2024. But the Korean Creative Content Agency has been pushing Korean literature in international markets for decades. The only slight break was during the Park administration when certain authors and artists were blacklisted from promotion (the less said about that, the better).

And this was the norm until approximately 2017.

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The Meteoric Rise of Webtoons

It’s accurate to say the massive expansion of Korean webtoons into international markets upended the translation industry.

By 2023, there were hundreds of webtoons being translated into French, Spanish, Japanese, and English. Even on the short-end, that’s an additional 5 million USD worth of projects that required translators and editors to produce every year.

Take into account that projects were considerably shorter than novels and the weekly publishing schedule meant consistent work for months (if not years), it’s no wonder that the Korean translation industry quickly made space for the webtoon industry.

I still remember sitting in meetings with translation companies back in 2019 and negotiating project volume because so few companies could work at the scale we needed. I also remember realizing that the webtoon company I worked at was quite possibly the biggest translation “company” in Korea at the time.

The Fall Back to Reality

The sudden surge in webtoon translation immediately resulted in multiple translation firms shifting their focus to webtoons. Not just in a bid to make money, but to attract investments from the content companies that run webtoon platforms and publishers.

Kiwi Vine was acquired by Kakao back in 2021 and, in 2022, Kakao acquired a majority stake in Voithru (my old employers). RIDI has made their own moves with Prodifi, a tool that uses AI to translate and typeset some of their webtoons. The list goes on.

The point being that translation was no longer a highly sought after commodity. The Korean translation market reacted quickly, filling the gap nearly a year after it appeared and webtoon platforms took full advantage.

Of course, that created its own problems.

The drop in rates has been industry wide for Korean translation. Not just because of AI, but because there are thousands of translators all vying for the same work and the industry has firmly shifted their focus from quality to quantity.

There were two major factors that fed into the downfall of the webtoon translation industry: (1) the failure of overseas webtoon expansion (along with the related costs) and (2) the drive to profitability. Not only were platforms reeling from their failures in Southeast Asia and Europe, but they were looking to trim fat where they could.

It was one thing when there weren’t enough translators to go around (and companies were poaching them from one another), it’s another when AI translations launched into the mainstream.

More than a few smaller translation agencies were known to be experimenting with AI-powered translations. Mantra in Japan has been known for their work on a context-sensitive manga translator while the recent sale of Seven Seas to Manga Do has fans up in arms about the potential use of AI translation in future printed works.

All over Reddit, you can find folks who suspect AI translations in their most loved (or hated) titles. But AI translation is a double-edged sword, one that risks alienating an audience so no company has copped to it.

At least until Naver announced improvements to their CANVAS program.

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The International CANVAS Platform

Powered by AI technology, the Translation Program is designed to help CANVAS Creators scale their stories across languages and reach new audiences worldwide, while maintaining full control over their creative and how their work is distributed. By removing language barriers, CANVAS will make it easier for Creators to build global fandoms while preserving what matters most: creative freedom, full ownership and control of their work, and a direct connection to fans.

My first thought when I saw this was, “Oof. Straight to the point, I see.”

It’s hard to say the signs weren’t there.

The closure of the Fan Translation Service in 2025 was a huge sign of what was coming. For those who aren’t in the know, the Fan Translation Service opened certain webtoon titles up for fans to translate into languages outside of the original source material. As the service was free, it could’ve been construed as a cost-cutting measure at the time.

Hindsight is 20-20.

Of course, expanding audiences for independent creators can hardly be said to be a bad thing. And the excuse could be made that without AI, the likelihood of “local” webtoons having access to a wider readerbase is impossible.

But it could also be said that WEBTOON is using AI to extract more ad revenue for CANVAS readers. Or that due to the inability for AI translations to be copyrighted, it muddies the waters in terms of pirate sites hosting AI translated webtoons.

Or, most importantly for WEBTOON, starting a paragraph in their press release with “Powered by AI technology…” is going to piss some folks off.

Hindsight is, in hindsight, 20-20.

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