“It has only been a few years since the Korean ‘webtoon’ genre was recognized in Japan. We have been putting in a lot of effort to make people enjoy webtoons and broaden their perspectives towards the content. Finally, we are starting to see some results. Our goal is not limited to introducing Korean webtoons to the Japanese market, but also to identify ‘webtoon originals’ that have the potential to work in the global markets of Korea, Japan, and the United States.”
Naver Webtoon continues to set new records in Japan, a country dominated by manga(comics originating from Japan). Following the record-breaking annual transaction value of $675 miillon (100 billion yen) for “Line Manga” and “eBook Japan” combined from January to November last year, the webtoon “Teenage Mercenary” surpassed the annual transaction value of $6.75 million (1 billion yen) on Line Manga last year. This is a record for a single work on Line Manga. In January last year, Line Manga became the first manga app in Japan to exceed 40 million downloads, and has been the No. 1 manga app in terms of monthly active users (MAUs) since August.
Naver Webtoon made its debut in the Japanese market in 2013, but only ventured into the webtoon business in 2020. Initially, Naver Webtoon offered e-books of Japanese manga published through its Line Manga app. However, since most of the works were non-exclusive, they were also available on other platforms besides Line Manga.
In August 2020, Line Manga’s business operation, Line Digital Frontier, became a subsidiary of Naver Webtoon’s U.S.-based Webtoon Entertainment, and the following year, Line Digital Frontier’s Chief Growth Officer (CGO), Kim Sin-bae, was appointed, and Naver Webtoon started to expand its webtoon business in the Japanese market.
Line Digital Frontier acquired eBook Initiative Japan, a company owned by SoftBank Group, in April 2022, after Kim’s appointment. Ebook Initiative Japan was responsible for operating the e-book sales platform Ebook Japan and the online bookstore Bookfan. The acquisition will enable Line Digital Frontier to target manga users on both the app and web platforms, through the app-centric service Line Manga and the web-centric e-books platform.
“Our goal is to introduce Korean webtoons to Japan and showcase hits” said Kim. “Japanese readers have only recently embraced webtoon content and are discovering it as an enjoyable alternative to manga,” he said adding, “It’s only in the recent few years that Japanese readers are starting to open their minds to webtoons and realize that ‘it’s not just Manga, but it’s fun,’” he said.
Kim’s ultimate goal is to expand the webtoon market by discovering original works that can be welcomed globally, regardless of their origin. He believes that creating webtoons for the Japanese market enables Japanese authors to work and succeed in their own way. Our team is committed to working on “cross-border” projects to ensure that content created in a region can draw popularity broadly in Korea, Japan, and the United States.
