This Week in Webtoon-ish, August 30rd
It's Naver's world, we're all just living in it.
This week is heavy on the Naver/WEBTOON news thanks to some interesting information on their marketing spending, new launches, and new features for the Japanese and Korean markets.
LINE Manga Spends Heavily on TikTok
According to a post by the Hankyung, LINE Manga spent 67% of its advertising budget from the first half of 2025 on TikTok. While TikTok has been pushing advertising in western countries due to their deep penetration into younger audiences, it hasn’t been as successful in Asian countries including Korea where YouTube is considerably more popular.
If LINE Manga is indeed spending investing heavily in TikTok ads, this puts Naver’s focus on short-motion content in the west as well as the “Cuts” app in Korea into new focus.
Source: Hankyung Korea Market
Suncheon Making Progress on their Animation and Webtoon District
Suncheon city located in the southwestern part of Korea has been investing heavily into their infrastructure in a bid to become Korea’s hub for animation and webtoon production. Located far outside the reaches of Seoul, Suncheon city has been revamping and modernizing their downtown district in order to attract more studios and businesses.
Thus far, they’ve been able to attract Kenaz as well as their partner/subsidiary Ono Korea into moving their HQ to the newly built facilities. 26 small and mid-sized content companies have confirmed they will be relocting to Suncheon city by November of this year.
While Bucheon used to be the animation district in Korea and Myeongdong was once considered to be the comic hub of Korea, studios and production companies have scattered across Seoul. Most webtoon publishers have relocated to tech-heavy districts like Guro Digital Complex as well as Bundang.
Source: Seoul Public News
Naver Picks Up “Slam Dunk” for Digital Publication in Korea
Naver Webtoon announced on August 29th that the digital version of the “Slam Dunk” remaster would be released on Naver Webtoon and Naver Series. The manga was released in Japan last June and was unavailable in Korea until the announcement by Naver.
“Slam Dunk” was a massively popular IP in Korea on part with shonen titles like Dragonball back in it’s peak. The inclusion of “Slam Dunk” follows a long line of popular manga titles making their way to webtoon platforms in Korea.
Source: Newsis
Naver Webtoon Launches New Features in Korea
Naver Webtoon launched multiple new features on their Korean platform including “What Are You Reading?”, “Character Chat”, and “Webtoon Feed”.
Of the four new features, “What Are You Reading?” acts as a community-board where users can leave behind their impressions or short reviews of webtoons on the service. While “Character Chat” is an AI-powered chatbot and photo filter, respectively. Webtoon feed is essentially a social-feed of creators and studios that you follow on Webtoon’s service.
Source: Seoul Webtoon Insight