[BizLeader] Cho Seungjin, CEO of Mr. Blue: "The country's largest comprehensive copyright and NFT utilization possibilities are endless"
Partnership Agreement Between Korbit and NFT Sales
[Asia Economy Reporter Jang Hyowon] “Mr. Blue, which holds the largest scale of ‘comprehensive copyrights’ in Korea, can develop various businesses on the NFT platform.”
Seungjin Cho, CEO of Mr. Blue, an online comic and webtoon specialist company, explained the reason for entering the NFT (Non-Fungible Token) market like this. The day before, Mr. Blue signed a business agreement (MOU) for NFT sales partnership with ‘Korbit,’ one of the four major virtual asset exchanges in Korea.
Mr. Blue is the company holding the largest number of comic copyrights in Korea, owning 1,902 titles and 57,275 volumes of intellectual property (IP). A particular strength is holding the comprehensive copyrights of the four great kings of martial arts comics, ‘Hwangseong, Yaseollok, Samadal, Haseungnam.’ In fact, the market share of the martial arts genre on Naver Webtoon is close to 80%.
CEO Cho said, “When Mr. Blue was first established in 2002, comics were scanned and shown on the internet, but 10 years later, the scroll-type webtoon appeared. Then, after another 10 years, NFT came out. From Mr. Blue’s perspective, which holds the IP, only the form of expression has changed, but providing content remains the same.”
Mr. Blue interprets NFTs as a platform that can distribute derivative products utilizing IP. In addition to webtoon services, they have been engaged in derivative product sales such as producing dramas and making goods like characters and illustrations, and now they are creating new products using blockchain technology.
CEO Cho explained, “For example, we expect to NFT-ize illustrations or digital art that can attract readers’ interest, such as coffee, cakes, or props that the main characters consume. Also, when purchasing NFTs, we are considering plus-alpha products such as meeting the favorite authors or actually sending goods.”
More specific NFT products will be planned together with Korbit, with whom they signed the MOU. Korbit not only provides an NFT trading platform but also has a system to jointly plan how to NFT-ize Mr. Blue’s vast IP. This is why Mr. Blue chose to partner with Korbit despite proposals from various NFT companies.
Furthermore, Mr. Blue plans to focus on acquiring new IPs that can be utilized as NFTs. He said, “We intend to focus on discovering IPs that can be made into NFTs, especially ‘comprehensive copyrights’ like the four great martial arts IPs, where all rights are held. Comprehensive copyrights allow the use of IP for 70 years after the author’s death and also hold rights to derivative creations, so the utility of NFTs will be high.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Blue is also planning to launch a play-to-earn (P2E) style game using the IP of the mobile game ‘EOS Red,’ which is provided through its subsidiary Blue Potion Games. Mr. Blue is known to have generated over 100 billion KRW in revenue after releasing EOS Red in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia in 2019.
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He stated, “EOS Red is especially popular in Taiwan, where unlike Korea, there are no regulations on P2E games. We expect to launch EOS Red integrated with P2E in overseas markets around the second quarter of next year.”
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