SEOUL, May 2 (Korea Bizwire) — Foreign tech giants are entering the webtoon market, indicating a possible paradigm shift in the Korean-dominated industry. Last month, Amazon.com, Inc. launched Amazon Fliptoon, a webtoon service, on the Kindle Store. Additionally, Apple Books, an e-book platform powered by Apple Inc., launched a vertical reading manga column. South Korean [...]
SEOUL, April 13 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean online webtoon service providers recently eased their strict criteria, releasing a wider variety of adult webtoons after sticking to wholesome comics. The number of adult web comics registered on Naver Webtoon stood at 71, of which 16 are currently published in a series, and the share of adults [...]
SEOUL, April 12 (Korea Bizwire) — Web novel readers in South Korea are more likely to pay for content than webtoon readers, with the former group spending more on content on a monthly basis compared to the latter group, a survey showed Tuesday. According to a survey of 2,500 Koreans aged 15 to 49 conducted [...]
SEOUL, March 1 (Korea Bizwire) — Naver Webtoon, an online platform for digital comics run by South Korea’s leading portal operator Naver, on Tuesday unveiled new technology that converts photos and videos into webtoon-style images on a real-time basis. During developer conference DEVIEW 2023 held at COEX in Seoul on the same day, Naver developers [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — Webtoon artists in South Korea are far more exposed to the risk of mental illness as they struggle with an excessive workload, a survey showed Wednesday. Dr. Min Ji-hee at Hanyang University Hospital conducted a survey of 320 webtoon artists making more than 500,000 won (US$390) in monthly income [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — With the illegal sharing of web-based comics emerging as a headache, South Korean online webtoon service providers are taking different approaches to address the problem. Naver Webtoon, an online platform for digital comics run by internet portal operator Naver Corp., is focusing on an artificial intelligence (AI)-based advance interruption system [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — Webtoons are fun to read with catchy visuals and creative stories, and they want to offer more to attract readers with differentiated content: music for your ears. While background music and sound effects have been used in some digital comics optimized for reading on mobile devices, audio had been [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — Korean-made webtoon services are gaining popularity in Japan. Japan’s MMD Laboratory reported that LINE Manga was most the widely used webtoon app at 41.9 percent as of June, followed by Piccoma at 37.3 percent. LINE Manga is operated by LINE, a Japanese mobile messenger arm of South Korea’s top [...]
SEOUL, March 16 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean webtoon series “Money Game” has been produced into an American web reality show, Naver Webtoon said Tuesday. The new American show is a five-episode reality show in which eight participants compete in a series of brainteaser games to win a prize of US$300,000. Jubilee, a YouTube channel [...]
BANGALORE, India, March 16 (Korea Bizwire) – TOONSUTRA, the India-focused mobile webtoon startup that has been incubating in stealth mode, announced it closed an oversubscribed pre-seed round for US$1.1 million. The new startup was incubated at leading character entertainment company Graphic India and was founded by media entrepreneur Sharad Devarajan. TOONSUTRA is building India’s first “Webtoons meets [...]