South Korean comics platforms dominate global top 10
Han-Gyeol Seon
Apr 12, 2022 (Gmt+09:00)
Kakao Piccoma is one of Kakao Corp.’s Japanese subsidiaries Six manhwa platforms operated by South Korea’s tech juggernauts rank among the top 10 paid digital comics platforms worldwide.
Manhwa is the general term for Korean comics and print cartoons and was added to the Oxford English Dictionary last October.
Piccoma logo
Kakao Piccoma, one of Kakao Corp.’s Japanese subsidiaries, announced Monday its app raked in the highest revenue worldwide in the fourth quarter of last year.
Kakao launched Kakao Piccoma in 2011 and launched an exclusive app in April 2016. Piccoma is Japan’s No. 1 ranked webtoon subscription service.
Naver Webtoon, a subsidiary of Naver, will establish a local entity in Europe within the first half of this year – preliminarily called Webtoon EU.
Once established, Naver Webtoon will be present in all of its target markets; namely South Korea, Japan and Europe, in addition to the United States where the headquarters are located.
Late last month, Naver Webtoon’s Japanese subsidiary Line Digital Frontier acquired Ebook Initiative Japan, an ebook service provider, from the SoftBank Group.
The National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA) forecasts the size of the global digital comics market to reach $1.3 billion this year.
Write to Han-Gyeol Seon at always@hankyung.com Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.