This Week in Webtoon-ish, August 16th
Deep breath, folks. There's a lot to unpack this week.
August is one of the busiest months of the year because it’s traditionally when Korean companies release their Q2 earnings reports. This week we got Kidari Studio, Soosung Webtoon, Millie’s Library, and WEBTOON Entertainment.
Then, we got more news from WEBTOON.
Maybe, more than we’d bargained for.
Kidari Studio Stays in the Black
Kidari Studio has announced an operating profit of 1.88 billion KRW for Q2 which represents a 156.6% increase YoY. The revenue for Q2 comes in at 51.8 billion KRW which is a 4% increase YoY.
Source: Digital Today
Millie’s Library Reports 20.7 Billion KRW Revenue for Q2
Millie's Library, the webnovel/e-book platform operated by Korea Telecom reported a revenue of 20.7 billion KRW in Q2 with 4.7 billion KRW in profits. That brings their first half to a total of 40.7 billion KRW in revenue and 8.5 billion KRW in profits.
They haven't launched webtoons on their service yet, but as the Millie's Library is in the process of absorbing KT's previous two webtoon platforms, it's really only a matter of time.
Source: KDF News
WEBTOON Beats Q2 Forecast
WEBTOON beat their revenue forecast by 2.7% with a total revenue of 348.3 million USD, but the detailed information is a mixed bag. Paid Content Revenue grew 5.4% driven by growth in Japan with a drop in Korea and the Rest of the World.
The Monthly Active User and Paid User counts each dropped, no doubt driven partly by the loss of the Daily Pass feature from WEBTOON’s overseas platforms.
Source: WEBTOON IR
Disney and WEBTOON Announce New Webtoon Titles in Production
Disney will be releasing digital scroll-view versions of their comics based on Marvel, 20th Century, Star Wars, and Disney titles on WEBTOON. But the bigger news is the development of new original titles for the WEBTOON platform. How and when these titles will be published is anyone’s guess, but it’s all anyone can talk about (including me).
Source: WEBTOON
Six of Naver’s Subsidiaries Held a Strike Rally on August 12th
Union members from Studio LICO along with five of Naver’s other subsidiaries staged a rally in Bundang in front of the Naver HQ on August 12th. Studio LICO is a Naver subsidiary known for their work on multiple popular webtoons such as "Return of the Blossoming Blade", "To Whom It No Longer Concerns", and "Ultimate Tutorial Warrior". While each subsidiary has their own negotiations with Naver, the pay disparity between Studio LICO’s union members and Naver’s in-house employee is at the center of breakdown in negotiations.
Source: News1
Soosung Webtoons Reports 62.8 billion KRW Revenue and 6 billion KRW Profits for 2025 H1
Soosung Webtoons is reporting 62.8 billion KRW in revenue for the first half of 2025 with an operating profit of 6 billion KRW. That's a 230.8% increase on last year with 27.2 billion KRW revenue and 150% compared to last year's 4 billion KRW in operating profits.
Toomics Global accounts for 23.1 billion KRW in revenue with 5.2 billion KRW in profits. Toomics is perhaps the only Korean webtoon company whose overseas revenue far exceeds the Korean revenue. There are plenty of reasons this is possible, but mainly because webtoon production is more expensive then webtoon translation.
Source: News MT
Korea’s Webtoon Launch Numbers Shrink in 2025 H1
In a report released by the Korea Manhwa Contents Agency (KOMACON), there were 8,123 webtoons registered in the first half of 2025. This is down 17.9% from 9,889 in 2024. This initial figure is based on registered launches on platforms which includes re-launches of older titles as well as duplicate launches (non-exclusive contracts).
The number of new titles registered was even less coming in at 5,543 titles which was further shrunk down to 2,322 when removing duplicate non-exclusive contracts.
The platform with the most new launches? Lezhin Comics with 875 new webtoons in the first half of 2025. Naver Series (which operates alongside Naver Webtoon) came in second at 853 new webtoons.
Source: KOMACON