South Korean comics platforms dominate global top 10

Six manhwa platforms operated by South Korea’s tech juggernauts rank among the top 10 paid digital comics platforms worldwide. 

Manhwa is the general term for Korean comics and print cartoons and was added to the Oxford English Dictionary last October. 

Kakao Piccoma, one of Kakao Corp.’s Japanese subsidiaries, announced Monday its app raked in the highest revenue worldwide in the fourth quarter of last year. 

Kakao launched Kakao Piccoma in 2011 and launched an exclusive app in April 2016. Piccoma is Japan’s No. 1 ranked webtoon subscription service.

On Feb. 17, the company launched the European version of its webtoon subscription service.

Naver Corp.’s Line Manga and Line Webtoon ranked second and third in terms of paid comics platforms worldwide. 

Naver Webtoon ranked sixth place and Tapas, which Kakao acquired last year, ranked eighth. NHN Japan Corp.’s Comico was 10th. 

Tech behemoths Naver Corp. and Kakao Corp. have been intensifying competition over which will dominate the global webtoon market. 

Naver Webtoon, a subsidiary of Naver, will establish a local entity in Europe within the first half of this year – preliminarily called Webtoon EU. 

Once established, Naver Webtoon will be present in all of its target markets; namely South Korea, Japan and Europe, in addition to the United States where the headquarters are located. 

Late last month, Naver Webtoon’s Japanese subsidiary Line Digital Frontier acquired Ebook Initiative Japan, an ebook service provider, from the SoftBank Group.

The National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA) forecasts the size of the global digital comics market to reach $1.3 billion this year.

Write to Han-Gyeol Seon at always@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.