KOCCA's 2025 Webtoon Survey Results (for 2024)
As published by the Korean Creative Content Agency (KOCCA).
The Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) just published their “2025 Webtoon Industry Survey”. The Korean government sponsors reports like these to understand the state of the webtoon industry by measuring sales, imports, exports, publishing contracts and also look for potential unfair practices by larger companies in the webtoon industry.
This year’s survey was held during October to November of 2025 and included companies in the webtoon industry during 2024.
The Industry at a Glance
Let’s unpack the big numbers first.
The webtoon industry was projected to be 2.2856 trillion KRW in 2024 which represents a 4.4% increase compared to the year before. This is the first time that the Korean government has used Nationally Approved Statistics to measure the size of the industry, so the comparison isn’t one-to-one.
Internationally, the the top markets were Japan (49.5%), North America (21.0%), China (13.0%), Southeast Asia (9.5%), and Europe (6.2%).
Considering the soft-block of Korean content to China was just lifted this year, it shouldn’t be a major surprise that China ranks so low on the list. And, based on Naver and Kakao’s reports on their webtoon revenue for Q3, Japan’s ranking also makes sense. But the real surprise is the placement of Europe below Southeast Asia and China.
This does however vibe with the massive pullout of webtoon platforms from European and Southeast Asian markets that was occuring as recently as earlier this year.
Inside the Korean Webtoon Market
The rest of the survey is geared towards unpacking the makeup of the webtoon industry in Korea. One section of the survey had respondents categorize their company into any of the following (each respondent was able to select more than one option):
Webtoon production: 80.3%
Webtoon distribution (agency): 49.7%
Webtoon content publisher: 32.6%
Webtoon services (platforms): 21.6%
Other: 8.6%
Considering the recent trend of platform closures, it makes sense that the number of production houses (studios) outnumbers the rest. That’s not considering the number of studios that Naver, Kakao, and Kidari Studios either own or have stakes in to produce exclusive content for their platforms.
Overseas Business
When it comes to webtoon exports, Japan takes up 49.5% while North America takes up 21.0%. Behind that we have China with 13.0%, Southeast Asia with 9.5%, Europe at 6.2% and South America at 0.7%. These are based on averages, not actual numbers of exports.
The majority of these exports are digital publishing rights (84.0%) with only 7.5% being for print publication. Less than that are secondary licenses at 3.9%.
The content import figures tell a significantly different story. Again, the vast majority of incoming content comes from Japan which is no wonder considering the popularity of manga and anime in Korea. But China comes in at a close second which isn’t a surprise for anyone who regularly visits Korean webtoon platforms and sees the large numbers of Chinese titles on offer.
On the other side, digital publishing makes up 76% while print takes up 20.1%. Again, this can be heavily attributed to the popularity of Japanese manga and webnovels as well as Chinese titles as well.
Takeaways
It bears repeating that the data and figures included in KOCCA’s report was volunteered through an online survey.
More than anything, the report reiterates the Korean webtoon industry’s recent focus on Asian markets, specifically that of China and Japan. It was reiterates the reasoning for pulling out of the Southeast Asian and European markets.
And while the Korean market imports content heavily from Japan and China, the number of titles coming in from western markets pales in comparison. And, honestly, nothing has occurred in 2025 to make me think this will change any time soon.