Naver Webtoon targets entertainment business in Japan

Naver Webtoon Ltd., the world’s top digital comics provider, is targeting the entertainment sector in Japan as it aims to expand its intellectual property business for growth.

Kim Shin-bae, Co-CEO of LINE Digital Frontier Corp., which manages Naver Webtoon’s Japanese market, said the company is set to make movies or produce goods based on its digital comics for the entertainment business.

“We will focus on a completely different strategy over the next 10 years from those concentrating on vitalizing webtoon platforms over the last 10 years,” Kim told The Korea Economic Daily in an online interview on May 1. “We will successfully make Japanese webtoons into animated movies and drama series and manufacture goods based on them as the fandom of Japanese cartoons is growing across the world.”

Such entertainment businesses are expected to expand the company’s webtoon IPs as it plans to maximize opportunities for cooperation between creators and the platform, Kim said.

LINE Digital Frontier has already been working on about 20 projects to make movies from webtoon IPs while establishing a drama production studio in Japan with South Korean entertainment powerhouse CJ ENM Co. and Studio Dragon Corp. last July.

TOP IN JAPAN

Naver Webtoon, the digital comics and novel platform of South Korea’s online portal giant Naver Corp. , started its business in 2013 there through LINE Manga, its service in Japanese.

LINE Manga became the country’s most popular cartoon app in January with more than 40 million downloads and its daily paid users surged 60% as of February from a year earlier.

“We were already top in the Japanese comics market last year based on consolidated transaction value,” Kim said.

“LINE Manga secured die-hard fans by providing about 200 addtional exclusive webtoons. We also recommend favorite content with advanced artificial intelligence technology.”

LINE Digital Frontier last year acquired eBOOK Initiative Japan, a subsidiary of SoftBank Group, to bolster its growth in the market. The e-book platform provides about 800,000 digital books and is linked with Yahoo Japan, the country’s top portal site, helping LINE Digital Frontier attract webtoon fans.

COOPERATION BETWEEN KOREA, JAPAN

Kim saw the possibilities of cooperation between South Korea and Japan through webtoons.

“We may see Korean webtoons being made into animated movies or dramas in Japan,” he said. “I am looking for opportunities for joint exchanges between Korea and Japan.”

Kim also left the door open for further acquisitions to strengthen its dominance in the global market.

“We are not currently considering any but will actively seek M&As of producers or platforms if they can help our businesses,” he said. “We aim to expand our territory in the global webtoon sector, starting from Japan.”

Naver Webtoon secured 85.6 million monthly active users across the world as of last year with 76% of them in non-South Korean markets.

Write to Ji-Eun Jeong at jeong@hankyung.com
 

Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.