China’s ByteDance invests $42 mn in Korea’s KidariStudio

China’s ByteDance Ltd., the developer of video-sharing social networking service TikTok, announced Friday that it invested 48 billion won ($42.3 million) in South Korea’s online content platform KidariStudio Inc.

ByteDance put 24 billion won in KidariStudio and the same amount in its wholly owned subsidiary Lenzhin Entertainment.

The deal marks the Chinese tech giant’s first investment into a Korean firm. 

Apart from the investment, KidariStudio formed a content partnership agreement with ByteDance; and plans to strengthen its webtoon operations in China. Under the agreement, KidariStudio will relinquish the intellectual property of some 1300 webtoons to ByteDance. 

The Korean content platform will use the fresh injection of cash to establish production studios in China and Japan. The company also plans to issue non-fungible tokens (NFTs) based on webtoon-based intellectual properties. 

Early last year, KidariStudio acquired Lezhin Entertainment, the provider of the popular Lezhin Comics.

Recently, it acquired Kidari ENT through a merger to grow into a comprehensive content provider that encompasses webtoon and web novel content, as well as video productions. 

A KidariStudio employee familiar with the matter told The Korea Economic Daily that the content provider is hopeful its partnership with ByteDance will strengthen its competitive edge in the global arena. 

Write to Joo-wan Kim at kjwan@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.