South Korea’s Webtoon Firms Leverage Low Cost Stories with Huge Potential

SEOUL: Netflix’s most-watched series at the end of November, “Hellbound,” caused a stir on television, but first appeared on much smaller screens as an online comic, or “webtoon,” optimized for smartphones.

The webtoon format, which began in Korea two decades ago, has revolutionized the creation of content for the film industry around the world.

With relatively little overhead, webtoons have become a gold mine for tens of thousands of visual stories, with a growing number of adaptations to streaming services such as Netflix, Apple TV Plus, and Disney Plus. And the readership of the webtoons themselves has grown increasingly global.

“If a drama or a movie fails, a bunch of people are in the red and therefore cannot experiment in different ways. But here when we fail we fail on our own. So we can experiment however we want,” said Choi Gyuseok, artist and co-creator of the “Hellbound” webtoon.

In South Korea alone, there are more than 14,000 webtoons created by 9,900 creators, according to data provider Webtoon Analysis Service. Tech companies Naver and Kakao are facilitating adaptations and targeting global expansion through their webtoon units.

“Our strength is that we have a lot of works in progress. On many platforms, when a successful series is finished, there aren’t enough alternatives. We have hundreds of works live in it. moment, “said Lee Hee-youn, director of Enterprise IP at Naver Webtoon.

Each series usually has weekly updates, increasing the amount of material to shoot.

“It’s a format that you visualize in three minutes while waiting for your friend … so almost every scene has to have something that can capture the reader. So there are a lot of ingredients to choose from when transferring the source material to other formats. Said Choi.

For creators – who earn an average of 48.4 million won (US $ 41,000) a year – the payoff for adapting a webtoon can be huge. Only about 8% of creators say their incomes have been significantly improved thanks to adaptation rights, according to data from the Korea Creative Content Agency.

“In a month or two, I made about three or four times as much money as I could make a year,” Hellbound’s Choi said of an adaptation of a previous webtoon. “It gave me the freedom so I didn’t have to start the next job immediately.”

Ownership of intellectual property rights for an adaptation depends on the contract between the creator, platforms like Naver and Kakao, and any intermediary agency. Payments can be a single-digit percentage of revenue, a minimum guarantee, or a mix of the two, analysts say.

WORLD READING

Webtoons’ PC and smartphone-specific innovations, such as vertical scrolling instead of page flipping, are intuitive to people 24 years of age or younger, who make up around 75% of Naver Webtoon’s 14 million monthly active readers in Canada. United States in September.

Naver’s Webtoon App and Kakao’s Tapas App are # 2 and # 3 downloads in the US in the free comic book apps category from Google Play, while in Japan, Piccoma and Line Manga , supported by Kakao and Naver respectively, are No. 1 and 2.

Naver’s global webtoons business saw quarterly sales increase 79% from a year ago, from July to September, and monthly active users grew from 50 million to 72 million in three years. outside Korea far surpassing those of Korea and global streaming services. adaptations helping to expand the market, said Lee de Naver.

The creators of Webtoon work an average of 10.5 hours a day, six days a week. The grinding schedule means that a concept can take as little as a week to go from the drawing board to the market.

The immediate public reaction in the form of views, payouts, and comments means webtoons can reflect current trends or attempt ambitious topics.

The Netflix-backed adaptation of “Hellbound,” which comments on human fallibility, cost an estimated 15-20 billion won ($ 12.7-17 million), South Korean media reported.

“In the past, the industry was small, so there were limits in the type of adaptations. Now streaming services have made it possible for new readers to come into the world and more investment, they are asking. so bigger ideas “such as settings in space instead of earth,” said Hongjacga, creator of the “Dr. Brain” webtoon, which was adapted for Apple TV Plus.

Lee de Naver said 10-20 webtoons from his platform are expected to be turned into other media next year through partnerships with streaming services.

(US $ 1 = 1,182.7,600 won)

(Reporting by Joyce Lee. Editing by Gerry Doyle)