Soosung Webtoons: Betting Big on AI
Q2 numbers completely overwhelm Q1, but the core of the business still needs help.
Apologies but I had to re-research some of the numbers for Q2 due to the differences in how different webtoon companies report their revenue. I’ve corrected my mistakes below.
Who are Soosung Webtoon?
Soosung Webtoon is actually the parent company of Toomics Holdings, Toomics International, and Toomics Korea which together operate the full-suite of Toomics platforms.
Currently, Toomics operates in Korean, Japanese, English, Italian, French, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Spanish, Latin American Spanish, Portuguese, and Thai. In addition, they also operate Lalatoon which is a more female-oriented platform for webtoon readers.
Toomics Korea is generally where most of their content is produced via in-house and independent creators. But, Toomics does also work with non-exclusive content from Korean, Japanese, and Chinese markets as well as other international creators.
Recent Headlines
Back in December, Soosung Webtoon increased their stake in Terapin (a webtoon production, licensing, distribution company) to 96.14% turning them into a subsidiary of Soosung Webtoon (Chosun Ilbo). Terapin (formerly Copin Communications) is responsible for multiple hit webtoons like “Lout of the Count’s Family” and “My Blasted Reincarnated Life”. In addition to gaining access to multiple hit titles for their own platforms, Terapin titles perform really well on third-party platforms which would add to their revenue from international distribution.
In January, Soosung Webtoon opened their Thai platform. That was followed up with a statement in June that Soosung was looking at Indonesia and Vietnam next (edaily) at a time when other platforms were pulling out of Southeast Asia (Pocket Comics and Piccoma).
The biggest story by far was Soosung Webtoon’s announcement regarding two of their titles, “Draco-Knight Commander” and “Someone Stop Her!” Both are Korean webtoons available on overseas platforms, but both were also produced with AI (Asia E). Legally, AI operates in a legal grey zone, but Soosung Webtoon saw the success of these webtoons abroad as a reason to push gen-AI produced webtoons forward in the future.
Numbers by the Numbers
Toomics separates their divisions into Platform, Distribution, and Advertising. They had a fourth division, Production (Terapin), but that has since been folded into Platform and Distribution.
Judging by the numbers, Toomics took a breather in Q1 and pushed their revenue into overdrive for Q2. Their platform division hit 3.3 billion KRW domestically, but their overseas revenue hit 25.41 billion KRW dwarfing the Korean market. Toomics is one of the only webtoon businesses in Korea whose overseas numbers far outdo their numbers at home.
Distribution is at a massive high, hitting 7.27 billion in Korea. This combined with the overseas distribution tells us that the Toomics brand in Korea isn’t anywhere near the level of other competitors in the market.
Looking Forward
Based on their 2025 H1 report, there are several core factors Soosung Webtoon intends to utilize in order to increase their revenue for the year:
AI-gen webtoons for exclusive publication
Female-oriented adult webtoons
Non-exclusive licensing and distribution
Brand re-branding
Optimized user experience
Toomics and Lalatoon both use subscription/Coin hybrid models. But, their content library is increasing filled with (a) adult content or (b) non-exclusive content from third-party publishers. Most distressingly, while Toomics has been around for nearly a decade, their brand power is nowhere as strong as Naver, Lezhin, or TOPTOON. Until they’re able to remedy that, focusing on international distribution may be their saving grace.
While their currently line-up includes AI-generated titles, it’s hard to imagine the consumer response to a larger percentage of AI-gen titles. The biggest risk isn’t just audience reaction, it’s potential changes in AI legislation which could leave them open to risk in the future.
Overall, in the current market, it makes sense for Toomics to pivot into adult content as well as AI-gen production of webtoons. Toomics cannot compete with mainstream platforms like Naver’s and Kakao’s while the non-pirate, male-adult market is impossibly fractured. Moving into female-audiences makes more sense, but they’ll be competing directly with platforms like Lezhin by doing so. Still, better to compete with Lezhin rather than Naver.s