The Results of KOCCA's Overseas Webtoon Development Grants are Up
Back in April, the Korean Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) announced a variety of grants geared towards the production and export of webtoon content in Korea.
This year’s grants included a surprising twist by offering webtoon studios and publishers funds when working with overseas creators and/or studios to produce webtoons for foreign and domestic markets.
A Quick FYI on KOCCA
The Korea Creative Content Agency is a government funded agency that offers a wide variety of support to companies, studios and individuals in the creative fields. This isn’t just webtoons or manhwa, but includes K-pop, literary agencies and authors, film and the arts at large.
I talked about this grant way back in April on LinkedIn, but it was specifically split into three different grants each with a separate purpose and requirements that had to be met in order to receive funding.
International Webtoon Production
The first grant was open to Korean webtoon studios and platforms in developing international webtoons IPs with overseas creators. The funding is capped at 500 million KRW and the main requirement was a foreign writer be involved in the webtoon. This could, in theory, be met by adapting a foreign IP, creating an original IP, or adapting a foreign webnovel IP.
Webtoon Genre Expansion
The second grant was aimed at expanding the overseas creator pool by supporting the development of overseas webtoon creators. This grant offered up to 250 million KRW used with the purpose of holding a webtoon contest or developing a training program for creatives abroad.
Global Market Development
The third grant was a combination of the prior two but at a much bigger scale and specific to developed markets like North America. It asked Korean companies to develop new overseas webtoon IPs, set up a webtoon contest or develop a training program and offered 1 billion KRW to do so.
If you’re thinking that these grants are overly broad and non-specific, you’re right. Most grants offered by government institutions are very specific in what they want and how they want the funding spent.
And Korea is no different. But KOCCA is.
KOCCA grants tend to be general and vague, but the actual spending of the grant money is kept much tighter and the agency requires/expects regular progress reports on the status of funded programs.
The Results
A large number of webtoon studios and companies were vying for these three webtoon grants and a total of five webtoon companies will be receiving these grants (KOCCA link):
International Webtoon Production: YLAB EARTH, Riverse
YLAB EARTH and Riverse are both huge studios in Korea. YLAB is famous for attempting to create an expanded universe of characters and stories, similar to western comic books. Their success has been limited, but many of their stories are financially successful. The biggest title they have overseas at the moment is likely to be “Jungle Juice” on WEBTOON.
And while everyone might not be familar with Riverse, they will be familiar with their parent company REDICE. They support production and distribution of multiple titles in the REDICE catalogue, but their biggest project they produce directly is Omniscient Reader
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One thing to remember is that these two studios will have to work with overseas creatives in order to publish a new webtoon project within the next year. The schedule is often pliable, but it should be interesting to see what these studios are capable of when matched with foreign IPs.
Webtoon Genre Expansion: Jaedam Media, Lezhin Entertainment
In the case of the Expansion Program, we have two interesting companies. Jaedam Media, in addition to publishing multiple titles, also runs a Korean platform known as Jaedam Shortz. It’s a smaller platform, but Jaedam has a large library of content not to mention a full-history of webtoon and manhwa publishing to fall back on. Shortz is home to a handful of overseas titles that were translated and typeset into Korean, but I can’t believe this is where the grant funding will go.
Lezhin Entertainment, of course, has multiple international platforms. And, they have a long history of working with foreign creators as well as hosting webtoon contests. Their last overseas project was a BL parody of “Phantom of the Opera” originally published through Kidari Studio’s French platform, Delitoon. And their last international webtoon contest was in 2020, dubbed the 2020 Lezhin Comic Challenge. This funding would go a long ways towards rebooting the international contest.
Global Market Development: Naver WEBTOON
Naver WEBTOON’s inclusion on this list is either surprising or obvious depending on how you think about it. In regards to the number of companies and platforms capable of targeting developed markets, there’s five or fewer. And the number of companies with a successful track record is even smaller.
This funding comes at a time when Naver has shifted their platform strategy and made massive changes to their platform including the widespread addition of non-exclusive content.
Being able to fully fund a webtoon contest and re-establish themselves as the home for professional-amateur webtoon content might be what they need at this point.
We Have Runner-Ups?
Surprisingly, KOCCA saw fit to publish the names of the companies that did not win the grant, but came close. This generally isn’t the case with KOCCA listing a censored version of company names in most cases.
These are given priority if, for some reason, the initial set of companies are unable to follow through with the project or turn down the grant.
International webtoon production: DCCN, Kidari Studio, Toricoms
Webtoon Genre Expansion Program: Daon Creative, Monster Riot
Global Market Development: TruLite Korea
DCCN and Toricoms looking for a funding in order to work with international IPs isn’t a surprise, as is Kidari. In fact, none of these companies raises an eyebrow except for TruLite Korea.
TruLite has their roots in translation, but has also produced a slate of webtoons in recent years. They’ve also taken it one step further and created Pentacomix, a Spanish-language webtoon platform which I’ve heard very little about. It’s unlikely that WEBTOON turns down the grant, but it’s interesting to see TruLite make it to the runner-up instead of any other webtoon platform in existence.
What’s Next?
The one thing missing from the results are what exactly each company plans to do with the funds. In regards to International Webtoon Production, YLAB and Riverse will have had to reach at least a cursory agreement with a foreign creator or studio in order to be awarded the grant.
And in the case of Jaedam, Lezhin, and WEBTOON, they will have submitted a summary plan on how to utilize the funds in the production of educational materials, lecture series, webtoon contest,or… whatever.
I’m curious to see how the schedule for each of these turns out. Especially if Jaedam, Lezhin, and WEBTOON all decided to run comic contests at the same time.
It’s not likely, but the word that enters my mind is “bedlam”.