Naver Webtoon Celebrates 5th Anniversary of Spinoff, Building a Global Platform Watched by 180 Million Users

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Naver Webtoon announced its achievements over the past five years on the 2nd, marking the 5th anniversary of its spin-off. Naver Webtoon was spun off in May 2017 after being a Naver in-house independent company (CIC) since 2015.

Naver Webtoon explained that over the past five years, it has expanded its proven successful 'StoryTech' platform model in Korea to the global market. In particular, it self-assessed that Naver Webtoon's unique platform model, which includes both the 'amateur content model' where anyone can showcase their work and the 'original content model' with official serializations on the webtoon platform, is also showing results overseas.

The monthly active users (MAU) of the StoryTech platform that Naver Webtoon has built worldwide increased from 46 million at the time of the spin-off in 2017 to 180 million as of March 2022. The monthly users of webtoon services such as 'Naver Webtoon (Korea)', 'LINE WEBTOON (Southeast Asia)', 'WEBTOON (North America, Latin America, Europe)', and 'LINE MANGA (Japan)' alone reach 82 million.

Naver Webtoon challenged the unfamiliar overseas webtoon markets early and currently provides services in a total of 10 languages worldwide, including Korea, Japan, North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. In particular, by applying the amateur promotion system and contests to each cultural region and continuously discovering local creators, it created a 'local creator ecosystem' that overcame cultural barriers. Approximately 6 million creators are active on Naver Webtoon's global platform and Wattpad, with the cumulative number of works reaching 1 billion.

Additionally, based on strengths such as ▲a powerful global platform where numerous creators and users communicate ▲a solid business model ▲a sophisticated IP value chain that extends from original IP to secondary and tertiary creations, Naver Webtoon has grown webtoons and web novels into core IPs in the global entertainment market. Naver Webtoon's annual transaction volume increased from about 240 billion KRW in 2017 to 1.05 trillion KRW in 2021.

Moreover, Naver Webtoon explained that it has led the development of AI technologies in the content domain, such as 'AI Painter' which automatically colors, and 'Toon Radar' which monitors illegal distribution and copies, thereby improving the creative environment.

Kim Jun-gu, CEO of Naver Webtoon, said in a 5th anniversary CEO message to employees, “The platform created by Naver Webtoon has gained the status of the 'Global No.1 StoryTech platform' used by 180 million people worldwide, and the company has become a global player that major companies in the global entertainment industry seek out first,” adding, “The growth in the next five years will be much greater than the growth of the past five years.”

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