Nowadays, many countries and regions have known Korean culture through dramas or simply famous manhwa series. It can be seen that Korea’s digital technology industry is developing strongly along with movies. And the webtoon appeared and became known as the “webtooniverse” when it was adapted on both computers and other smart mobile devices. Webtoons is widely loved for its compelling storyline, delicate character art, and also the quality of images and sounds when they are adapted into the most popular Korean films. Then you will know that webtoon is an endless source of inspiration for dramas.
Webtoon has generated huge revenue, increasing from 52.9 billion won in 2010 to 880 billion in 2018 and 900 billion in 2019. This number will even surpass 1 trillion in 2020. This webtoon industry is quite large, about 9 trillion won. If you include dramas adapted from webtoons, this number rises to 100 trillion.
Although Google is quite popular, but in Korea, the main search portals are Daum and Naver. Naver ranks 5th in the world and provides users with content and reviews in the form of emails, blogs, etc. And Naver is also the most optimal and convenient platform for reading webtoon manhwa. Naver is known as the first platform to publish webtoon in 2004, then changed to WEBTOON. When expanding to a global readership, the 2nd largest portal Daum combined with Kakao and competed strongly with Naver. While Naver focuses on strengthening the platform, Kakao has ambitions to dominate Naver. These are both big, well-known companies in the industry in Korea, they both have the same goal of reaching out to the world. And they have translated their webtoon into many languages to serve readers: French, Dutch, Indo, …
Webtoon outside the Korean market is developing very strongly and is popular in Europe, America, Japan, …
Webtoon in the US
In the US and many other English-speaking countries, the webtoon is widespread and goes viral. Not only Marvel, DC, webtoon also has a big influence. The number of webtoon manhwa users and readers is increasing gradually over time, sales here have reached 65% year-over-year. In the US, sales have reached more than 10 billion won.
Webtoon in Japan
Japan is very famous for manga because it is considered the birthplace of manga. The content of Japanese back issues comics is contextualized and localized for the Korean market in order to be close to users. They successfully keep the culture alive in all aspects and in turn, Korean youth are very interested in manga culture.
Webtoon in Europe
Naver is creating a powerful global webtoon ecosystem. Currently, webtoon, manhwa, webcomics, … are available in many countries and regions and have been translated into many languages: Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish and Indonesian. However, Kakao will launch their first platforms in Thailand and Taiwan, and will open more services in more languages. With this expansion, many other webtoon publishers are looking to publish more stories and make them widely available to users. According to reports, the Spanish, French and German translations are the most popular.
Webtoon in Indonesia
In Indonesia, webtoons manhwa is earning quite a lot of revenue. In Thailand and Indonesia, the markets are both thriving there, finding to read the translated webtoon is usually very easy, causing no difficulty for the reader. Indonesia has become one of the leading countries with the goal of localizing comics as other webcomics communities are growing. In addition, in India, China and Germany, the webtoon market is also well developed. In Asia, webtoon is like Disney. Currently, with the online and vertical reading format, readers are gradually adapting and preferring this format. When resources become abundant, people around the globe will be connected to each other and access the webtoon easily.
Multilingual Webtoon
Talking about webtoon translation companies, CCC International is quite a reputable company. They focus on translating from Korean to English, because this is the strongest demand. In addition, they also have translation groups in Japan, Sing, Germany, …