Webtoon^{[lower-alpha 1]} (stylized in all caps) is a South Korean webtoon platform launched in 2004 by Naver Corporation, providing hosting for webtoons and compact digital comics. The platform is free, and is found both on the web at Webtoons.com and on mobile devices available for both Android and iOS.^[1]

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.^[2][3] 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.^[4] 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^[5] banner and hosts a number of other series on its self-publishing site Canvas.^[6] Line Webtoon comics can be discovered through the "daily system" function, along with being read and downloaded for free on computers and both iOS and Android devices.^[7][8] In November 2020, Webtoon established a new subsidiary called Webtoon Studios for the purpose of licensing English-language properties.^[9] In August 2022, it was reported that Wattpad Webtoon studios announced that would expand with a new animation division.^[10]

Webtoons are a sub-menu of the gate companies that began with South Korean portal services Daum and Naver. Posting comic content for free caused the $3 billion South Korean book and comic industry to rapidly collapse. The Naver site started in 1999 by merging with Hangame, but it initially had a muted response as a hidden menu. Webtoon administrators paid comic artists only 50,000 Korean Won ($50) as their monthly wage, a highly unscrupulous tactic. In the 1990s, Korean artists claimed that even with a monthly income of 6 million Korean Won ($6,000), it was challenging to do weekly serials. With exorbitant royalties, professional artists experienced mental shock.^[11]

In 2013, Webtoon launched Page Profit Share (PPS), which offered the artist a share of the advertising revenue for the first time.^[12] After the purchase of Wattpad in early 2021 by Naver Corporation, both companies started to work together under Naver's content division.^[13][14] Webtoon now features webcomics such as: Lore Olympus, unOrdinary, True Beauty, Space Boy, and Gourmet Hound.

South Korea had long prohibited cultural exchange with Japan due to the traumatic history of Japanese colonial rule. In 1998, official cultural exchanges were established, following South Korea's financial crisis in 1997, initiated by the IMF. Many unemployed individuals used their severance pay to start comic rental shops, and the government issued excessive licenses, leading to saturation.

Publishers expanded their comic titles during this period, and comic book sales flourished at the end of the century. However, the excessive rental shops returned comics bought on credit within a month, causing publishers to face economic hardship. As digital comic companies started emerging, they created webzines, such as N4 and Comics Today, but these businesses ultimately failed due to unethical behavior by their CEOs.

Portal sites gathered a large online audience by offering comics as bait, and Daum initially led the webtoon market. Naver, taking advantage of the unexpected success of comics, placed webtoons in premium advertising spaces worth 300 million Korean Won on its portal surface. This significantly increased their traffic and allowed Naver to surpass Daum. The key to their success in the portal market was comics.

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 in webtoons, but they did not fairly share the ad revenue with artists. Unfair contracts accumulated, and in 2010, Nate exposed Daum's unfair treatment of comic artists, revealing that they earned less than 1 million Korean Won ($700) per month. The unfair practices of Naver remained undisclosed.

In 2012, Naver and Daum 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."

Naver adopted this payment model and, due to the free nature of its site, had to offer low royalties to artists. However, the influx of readers brought in significant income through search keywords, exceeding the revenue from selling comics, despite the cost of around 26,000 to 4,000 Korean Won ($20 to $3) per keyword.

Moreover, there were multiple ads. Naver absorbed the electronic publication rights of Korean artists for a small fee, which allowed them to monopolize works for a long time even though they were not books. Mobile platforms were utilized for brand promotion, and international publishing rights were eventually obtained. Many aspiring creators submitted free comics, and the influx of free content was guaranteed as long as they were not part of the 0.1% that received a formal serialization.

Due to this discrimination, freelance creators couldn't unite. Some profited from this system, which improved the company's image thanks to a few star artists. The "vertical scrolling" method was used to fit more content, demanding over 100 cuts, which strained artists' health due to the excessive workload.

Kakao Webtoons' top artist, for example, died at the age of 37 due to overwork. The BBC reported on artists suffering from severe labor and exploitation. The "gate sites," which were initially established to support comics, became highly profitable.

The userbase of Webtoon grew rapidly after the service was released globally, with 10 million people reading on the platform daily and 35 million people monthly.^[59] In Asia, several webtoons receive 5 million views per week.^[59] In 2016, 42% of the webtoon creators on Line Webtoon were female, as were 50% of its 6 million active daily readers.^[60][61] 75% of the users in North America are 24 or younger and 64% are female.^[62][63]

Between 2020 and 2021, Webtoon paid out more than $27 million to its base of more than 120,000 creators who publish in English. In Korea, top creators earn an average of $250,000 per year. The top creator earned around $9 million in 2021.^[64]

As of March 2023, Webtoon has grown to receive more than 125 billion views annually. It has 85.6 million monthly active users worldwide, and has become the top webcomic platform in the United States with 12.5 million monthly active users.^[65][66]

Webtoon uses coins as a currency that readers can purchase in the app. Currently, the currency is exclusive to readers using the Android or iOS versions of the app.^[67] Readers can utilize coins to support their favorite creators and access completed series or Fast Pass content, allowing them to read ahead. The number of coins required to unlock an episode varies depending on the series being read. In addition, Coins can be utilized to unlock Daily Pass episodes. For every Daily Pass series, you have the option to unlock one episode for free each day. Once unlocked, each Daily Pass episode remains accessible for 14 days. Alternatively, you may use Coins to unlock these episodes, which allows you to access them for as long as the series is available on Webtoon.^[68]

Naver Corporation has held various comics competitions through its Webtoon service. In 2015, Line launched the "Challenge League", a recurring competition where amateur artists have the chance to become an "official Line webtoon artist", as well as win tens of thousands of US Dollars. Over 19,000 people joined the first English-language Challenge League in February 2015, which was won by Stephen McCranie's Space Boy.^[69] Local Challenge Weeks were also held; the first Thai Challenge League was held in April 2015 and had a grand prize of 1 million baht.^[70]

In June 2015, Naver Corporation hosted the Science Fiction Comics Contest, a global competition with a grand prize of US$30,000. JunKoo Kim called science fiction, the theme of the competition, "both the broadest and fastest-growing area in comics and entertainment, [and thus] a natural fit as the genre for our second comics contest." This contest had over 800 entrants and was won by Srinitybeast's Overdrive.^[71][72]

In November 2018, Webtoon hosted their Discover Creator Contest. The winner, Kris Nguyen's Cape of Spirits, received a grand total of US$80,000 and an exclusive contract for the series.^[73]

On February 28, 2020 "The Short Story Contest" was announced. Running from April 30 to June 30, the contest was split into two categories: "Heart" and "Brain". The grand prize winners of each category would get US$15,000, an animated short, and a featured contract,^[74] with the subsequent winners being Marvin W.'s The Monster Under My Bed for "Heart" and Kotopopi's and Kibbitzer's The Ladder for "Brain".^[75] The grand prize, silver, and bronze contest winners were published in two anthologies: the Heart Anthology, which released in September 2020,^[76] and the Brain Anthology, which released in October 2020.^[77]

Between April 2020 and July 2020, Webtoon ran an interactive contest series titled Webtoon GREENLiGHT wherein nine titles were selected and pitched to readers. The readers then voted (by liking the series' episodes) on which series would be "greenlit" as new original series. Within one week, each series had to reach a record threshold of 60,000 likes on its third episode in order to be "greenlit" for publication.^[78] All nine series succeeded and were released in 2021.^[79]

In the summer of 2022 Webtoon started a new contest for their users to create an action comic called Call to Action where the winner got US$50,000 and a chance to be a Webtoon original.^[80]

In August 2022 Webtoon announced a Valorant contest held in conjunction with Riot Games, having fans submit original artwork depicting their interpretations of character Fade, with ten webcomics selected as winners.^[81]

• Kakao Webtoon
• Line Manga
• Studio N, a film studio that produces drama adaptations of Naver Webtoon series
• Tapas (website)