Woongjin ThinkBig signs licensing deal with Disney

South Korean educational technology company Woongjin ThinkBig Co. on Tuesday said it signed a licensing agreement with Walt Disney Korea, the domestic branch of the American entertainment and media giant, to launch a Disney series using the South Korean side's reading device for children ARpedia.

Woongjin ThinkBig is developing a new program for ARpedia dubbed Disney English Reading (tentative name), which features book reading in English for educational purposes. The company secured the copyrights for this in South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam as a start and is considering expansion to the US and the rest of Asia.

ARpedia combines the advantages of digital and print books in one reading gizmo. Featuring 15 famous Disney and Pixar works like the "Frozen" series, "Zootopia," "Inside Out" and "Moana," Disney English Reading has 45 books consisting of 15 in augmented reality (AR) and 30 in reading forms.

Both companies will cooperate in making AR-based children's products using Disney intellectual property rights as well as a collaborative series with ARpedia's first global brand. 

"We're glad to collaborate with Disney Korea and look forward to synergy," Woongjin ThinkBig CEO Lee Jae-jin said. "This is an opportunity for us to exert maximum effort so that ARpedia can go beyond Korea to become a global edu-tech product."

Write to Kyung Ju Kang at qurasoha@hankyung.com