Instagram poised to crack Korean webcomics market

Big tech has begun its encroachment on the South Korean webcomics market, largely dominated by local players over the past two decades, fanning fears that they will soon fully invade the market after tightening their grip in the country’s social media realm.

According to the state-controlled Korea Creative Content Agency’s 2024 white paper on the comics industry released on Wednesday, Korean users reading webcomics on Instagram have reached 20.9%, up 7.3 percentage points from 2023 and three times higher than in 2021.

This year, Instagram ranked as Korea’s fourth most-used digital comics platform, elbowing out Kakao Webtoon to fifth with 20.8% of the respondents saying they used it.

Each respondent of the report’s survey was asked to submit their top three favorite digital comic platforms, which were used to tally the results.

The Korean webcomics market is still largely commanded by major Korean players – Naver Webtoon Ltd. with 87.1%, KakaoPage with 37.6% and Series by Naver Webtoon with 27.6%.

Most of the top players saw their usage rate up from a year ago, but Kakao Webtoon lost 7.6 percentage points over the same period.

Kakao Webtoon, first serviced in 2003, used to be one of Korea’s leading webcomics platforms with many star creators.

'INSTAFOBIA'

The Korean content industry, however, has predicted Instagram’s fast inroads into the country’s digital comic market, citing the platform’s lower barriers to access for both creators and users thanks to its social media format and simple user interface.

Instagram’s digital comic platform Insta Toon has more than 2.3 million webcomics uploaded as of Wednesday. They are mostly stories about mundane daily life.  

Instagram launched a content support program in December last year to help webcomics creators earn revenue by publishing their stories on Instagram.

Local governments also joined the move, hosting Insta Toon contests to promote local creators.

Against Instagram's raid, Korea’s homegrown mid and small-size webcomic platforms have quickly lost ground to Instagram over the past year.

Lezhin Comics, once the country’s No. 3 digital comics platform after Naver and Kakao, saw its readership shrink from 15.6% in 2022 to 13.1% in 2023 and 9.5% this year.

Ridi Corp., often referred to as Korea's Kindle, recorded 3.6%, lower than Facebook’s 4.5%.

BIG TECH’S TIGHTER GRIP

Instagram’s fast rise in the Korean digital comics market resembles how YouTube has rapidly conquered the Korean social media market in the past few years.

According to data from app analytics firm Wiseapp·Retail·Goods, Koreans spent a total of more than 1.8 billion hours on YouTube in September, up 9.5% from the same month last year.

Koreans’ total time spent on Instagram jumped 42.1% to nearly 379 million hours over the same time, becoming the country’s third most-used platform.

Korea’s portal giant Naver Corp. lost to Instagram to rank fourth after its users’ total spent time shrank 9.7% over the same period, while No. 2 KakaoTalk, Korea’s dominant messenger app used by more than 90% of the South Korean population, also saw a 3.3% decline.

Google is also seeking to take advantage of the vibrant Korean webcomics market.

In August, global digital comics platform Dashtoon signed a deal with the Korea Webtoon Industry Association (KWIA) to team up with Korean creators to expand its footing in the global digital comics market.

This deal was a part of the partnership agreement between the digital distribution service of Google and the KWIA signed last year to support the global expansion of Korean webcomics.

Under the deal, the KWIA will supply digital comics in the US and India through Dashtoon, while the platform will introduce Dashtoon Studio, its generative artificial intelligence tool for webtoon production, to Korean creators.

To ward off global big tech’s ascent in the Korean digital comics market, Kakao Entertainment Corp., the parent of KakaoPage and Kakao Webtoon, will actively incorporate artificial intelligence to enhance the competitiveness of its webcomic platforms.

It will launch the AI service Helix Shorts, which can produce short-form web comics and web novels, by the end of the year.

Write to Ju-Hyun Lee at deep@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.