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Webtoon (platform)

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Webtoon (platform)

Webtoon (stylized in all caps) is a South Korean-American webtoon platform launched in 2004 by Naver Corporation, providing hosting for webtoons and compact digital comics. The platform, controlled by Naver and the Naver-SoftBank Group joint venture LY Corporation through a Delaware-domiciled, Los Angeles, California-headquartered holding company Webtoon Entertainment Inc., is free and can be found both on the web at Webtoons.com and on mobile devices available for both Android and iOS.

The platform first launched in South Korea as Naver Webtoon and then globally as Line Webtoon in July 2014, as the Naver brand is not well known outside of South Korea, and some of its services are also not available outside of the country. The service gained a large amount of traction during the late 2000s and early 2010s. In 2016, Naver's webtoon service entered the Japanese market as XOY and the Chinese market as Dongman Manhua (咚漫漫画). On December 18, 2018, Naver closed XOY and migrated all of its translated and original webtoons to Line Manga, its manga service that offers licensed manga. In 2019, Line Webtoon was changed to Webtoon in English; Spanish and French versions were launched.

The platform partners with creators to publish original content under the Webtoon Originals banner and hosts a number of other series on its self-publishing site, Canvas. Line Webtoon comics can be discovered through the "daily system" function, along with being read and downloaded for free on computers and both Android and iOS devices. In November 2020, Webtoon established a new subsidiary called Webtoon Studios for the purpose of licensing English-language properties. In August 2022, it was reported that Wattpad Webtoon Studios would expand with a new animation division. On September 16, 2025, The Walt Disney Company acquired 2% equally stake of Webtoon Entertainment, as part of expanded collaboration of Disney-owned content adaption between two companies.

Webtoons are a type of episodic digital comic that originated in South Korea, usually meant to be read on smartphones. Posting comic content for free caused the $3 billion South Korean book and comic industry to rapidly collapse. While webtoons were mostly unknown outside of South Korea during their inception, there has been a surge in popularity internationally, thanks to the easy online accessibility and variety of free online comic content. Today, Webtoons make roughly $5.91 billion in just the U.S. alone. In the country, as digital comics have emerged as a popular medium, print publication of comics has decreased. The amount of material published in webtoon form has now reached an equal amount as that published offline.

Webtoons are a sub-menu of the gate companies that began with South Korean portal services Daum and Naver. The Naver site started in 1999, but it initially had a muted response as a hidden menu. Portal sites gathered a large online audience by offering digital comics as bait. Naver, taking advantage of the unexpected success of digital comics, placed webtoons in premium advertising spaces worth 300 million Korean won on its portal surface. This significantly increased their traffic. The key to their success in the portal market was digital comics.

Webtoon Entertainment, the serial comics platform, was founded in South Korea in 2005 by CEO Junkoo Kim, Naver. Since its launch in 2013, WEBTOON has become the most popular mobile app, catering to young adults and teens who enjoy reading comics and webcomic content. Similar webcomics can be found on these platforms, including Tapas, Pocket Comic, and others.

In 2004, they already had a market share of 80%. Kim Jun-gu, who introduced the "Bizarre Comics" genre, played a crucial role in Naver's rapid growth. In 2008, Naver introduced ads on webtoons, but they did not fairly share the ad revenue with artists.

In 2012, Naver did not participate in the legal crackdown on illegal sites that had been pirating their content for eight years. The first legal action was taken against a frame-link piracy site. In 2013, Lezhin Comics introduced a new form of payment called "Time Delay."

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