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Korean webtoons, known in Korean as 웹툰, are full color digital comics built for the vertical scroll on a smartphone. Born on Korean web portals in the early 2000s, they have grown into a multibillion dollar industry that now feeds Netflix, Crunchyroll, and Hollywood with a steady stream of source material. This guide breaks down the three main platforms, the format's history, the authors behind the global hits, and how to read webtoons outside Korea.
What Is a Korean Webtoon
A webtoon is a digital comic optimized for a phone screen. Instead of multi panel pages laid out left to right, webtoons are read by scrolling down a single long vertical strip. Color is the default, episodes drop on a weekly schedule, and most series remain free to read on the host platform with an option to unlock the latest chapters early through paid coins or daily passes.
The format took off because it matched how Koreans were already consuming the internet on subway commutes and during short breaks. Long vertical strips work on any screen size and require no awkward zooming.
A Short History Since 2003
The webtoon industry traces its modern start to 2003, when Daum launched a dedicated Daum Webtoon (now Kakao Webtoon) service that gave artists like Kang Full a free national stage. Naver followed in 2004 with Naver Webtoon, which would grow into the world's largest webtoon platform. Early hits like Kang Full's Apartment proved that long form digital comics could carry the kind of dramatic weight previously reserved for print manhwa.
In 2014, Naver expanded internationally with LINE Webtoon, the English language brand that brought the platform to readers in North America, Southeast Asia, and Europe. According to The Korea Times, the domestic webtoon market was estimated at roughly 1 trillion won by 2019 and continues to grow with double digit content exports each year.
LINE Webtoon vs Naver Webtoon vs KakaoPage
Three platforms dominate. Naver Webtoon is the Korean original, home to action and fantasy juggernauts like Tower of God, Noblesse, and The God of High School. Its global brand LINE Webtoon, now run by Webtoon Entertainment, hosts English, Spanish, French, Indonesian, Thai, and other localized versions. The company listed on Nasdaq in June 2024 under the ticker WBTN.
KakaoPage, run by Kakao Entertainment, is the second pole. It absorbed the Daum Webtoon catalog and built its catalog around a wait or pay model that monetizes binge readers. Kakao also owns Piccoma in Japan, which became the highest grossing non game app in the country in 2021. Kakao's strength is fantasy and isekai style web novels that later get drawn into webtoons, with Solo Leveling as the flagship example.
For the reader, the practical difference is the catalog. Tower of God, Lookism, and True Beauty live on Naver and LINE Webtoon. Solo Leveling, Itaewon Class, and many regression and tower fantasy series live on KakaoPage and its global brands.
The Vertical Scroll Innovation
The biggest creative shift webtoons introduced is the vertical scroll. Artists use the descending strip as a timing tool, stretching white space between panels to slow the reader's eye, then dropping a wide cinematic frame at a key moment. Background music, motion effects, and the now standard one panel jump scare in horror series like Bastard and Sweet Home are all built around scroll speed.
This is why direct ports of paper comics rarely succeed as webtoons, and why webtoons translate so naturally into film and television. A vertical strip already thinks in shots.
Webtoons That Became K-Dramas and Anime
The cross media pipeline is now the loudest selling point of the industry. Recent hits include:
- Itaewon Class, a Daum webtoon by Cho Kwang-jin that became the 2020 JTBC drama starring Park Seo-joon, with the original author writing the script.
- True Beauty, the Naver romance by Yaongyi, adapted into the 2020 to 2021 tvN series with Moon Ga-young and ASTRO's Cha Eun-woo.
- Sweet Home, the horror webtoon by Carnby Kim and Hwang Young-chan, turned into a Netflix trilogy that ran from 2020 to 2024.
- All of Us Are Dead, based on Joo Dong-geun's Naver webtoon Now at Our School, which became the global Netflix hit of 2022.
- Hellbound, Yeon Sang-ho and Choi Gyu-seok's supernatural webtoon and its Netflix adaptation.
- Tower of God, the long running SIU webtoon now in its second anime season.
- Lookism and Bastard, both Naver originals adapted as Netflix animated series.
- Misaeng and Cheese in the Trap, two earlier office and campus webtoons that proved the model in the mid 2010s.
- Strangers from Hell, the Naver psychological thriller by Kim Yong-ki turned into the 2019 OCN series.
The Authors Behind the Hits
Top tier webtoon authors are now national figures with earnings that reach into the hundreds of millions of won per year. A few names worth knowing:
- SIU, the pen name of the Tower of God creator, who has been serializing the series on Naver Webtoon since 2010 and is one of the most influential figures in the modern format.
- Park Tae-jun, often written as Yongje Park or Taejun Pak, who created Lookism in 2014 and later founded the studio Redice to expand his catalog.
- Carnby Kim and Hwang Young-chan, the writer artist duo behind both Sweet Home and Bastard.
- Chugong, the web novelist behind Solo Leveling, with the webtoon art handled posthumously by Jang Sung-rak (DUBU) of Redice Studio.
- Yaongyi, the True Beauty creator, whose social media is followed by millions inside and outside Korea.
Global Success and the 2024 IPO
The Solo Leveling animated series, produced by A-1 Pictures and licensed by Aniplex and Crunchyroll, became the most watched new anime on Crunchyroll in 2024 and swept the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards with nine wins including Anime of the Year. Solo Leveling: Arise, the Netmarble action RPG built on the same IP, generated 70 million dollars in its first month of release in May 2024 according to KED Global.
On the corporate side, Webtoon Entertainment, the parent of Naver Webtoon and LINE Webtoon, went public on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on June 27, 2024 at 21 dollars per share, raising 315 million dollars and closing its first day around 23 dollars. The Korea Herald reported that Naver retained a 63.4 percent stake while LY Corporation, the parent of LINE Yahoo, held 24.7 percent.
How to Read Korean Webtoons Internationally
Readers outside Korea have three main entry points. The official LINE Webtoon site and mobile app at webtoons.com is free, ad supported, and offers professionally translated chapters of Tower of God, Lookism, True Beauty, Bastard, and thousands more titles. Tapas, also part of Webtoon Entertainment, hosts a similar catalog with a slight skew toward romance and BL. Kakao runs the global Tapas app and Piccoma in Japan for the KakaoPage catalog including Solo Leveling.
A handful of titles, especially older Daum classics, are still hard to find legally in English. For those, Kakao Webtoon's regional apps in Thailand, Indonesia, and Taiwan often carry official translations before they reach the West.
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