NHN Webtoon Service ‘Comico’ Accelerates Expansion Beyond Asia and North America to Europe and South America

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] NHN's webtoon service 'Comico' is accelerating its global market expansion into Europe and South America by expanding its self-produced content.

On the 25th, NHN announced that it has established the Comico webtoon production studio and is producing over 100 works in-house, including original webtoons. The newly established studio is staffed with PDs and popular authors from well-known webtoon platforms and production companies, and plans to showcase a variety of original webtoons and hit intellectual property (IP)-based webtoons, focusing on romance and romance fantasy, Comico's main genres.

NHN plans to accelerate the expansion of its global webtoon business this year by leveraging its self-produced content. Comico aims to become the leading global female-oriented webtoon platform and will actively target markets in Europe and South America beyond Asia and North America. The English version of Comico, 'Pocket Comics,' launched its French service in January and is preparing to launch a German service in the second quarter of this year.

Comico, which has a strong killer category centered on romance, has recorded 46 million cumulative downloads globally. 'Pocket Comics,' launched in 2020, saw its North American revenue grow 6.5 times year-on-year last year. Comico plans to continue this momentum by providing existing popular works such as 'Lady to Queen' and 'Anyway, It's Romance Fantasy' translated into local languages, while expanding self-produced content centered on its production studio.

To strengthen Comico's self-produced content, NHN is actively discovering IPs that can be used as original works for webtoons, such as web novels and dramas. In the second half of this year, NHN will launch the romance fantasy specialized web novel label 'La Vie en Rose' and begin producing novel comics based on web novel originals. 'La Vie en Rose' has already signed contracts with many popular authors and plans to support the webtoon adaptation of published web novels through synergy with the Comico webtoon production studio.

NHN will also produce drama comics based on K-dramas that have gained high popularity overseas. NHN has secured rights from original creators for about 10 dramas and movies that were highly talked about domestically and internationally, such as 'Temptation of Wife' and 'Cheer Up, Mr. Kim,' and plans to adapt these works into differentiated content suitable for webtoon storytelling. The first drama comic for Comico will be a work emphasizing fantasy elements based on the original 'Rooftop Prince,' scheduled to start serialization in May.

NHN is also enhancing creator welfare to nurture and discover webtoon artists. It continuously expands welfare benefits such as providing dedicated studios and equipment free of charge to contracted artists. Through this, NHN aims to build a Comico ecosystem that coexists with creators and promote sustainable growth of the platform.

Kim Il-kyung, Director of NHN Comico Business Division, said, “Comico has pioneered the global female-oriented webtoon market based on genre specialization and thorough localization strategies. After confirming Western readers' demand for our main genres over recent years and expanding production infrastructure, from this year onward, we will actively introduce differentiated killer content to the global market through our internal studios and labels.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.