Enter 2021.01.16 06:00
Sweet Home, Itaewon Class, level-up popular works for myself only
K-webtoon-based content has established itself as the new mainstream of the Korean Wave
Contents based on the K (Korea) webtoon are showing a rapid growth, establishing themselves as a new mainstream genre of the Korean Wave. It is recreated as a drama like Sweet Home, but it is derived in various forms such as movies, animations, and translations. This year as well as Sweet Home, the release of masterpieces is expected, raising expectations.
The work that signaled K Webtoon’s global advancement was the’Tower of God’ animation. This work, originally based on Naver Webtoon, received high attention even before its release because it was a collaboration between Korea, the United States, and Japan. Centered on Naver Webtoon, the US’Crunch Roll’ participated as an investment and distributor, and the Japanese animation production company’Telecom Animation Film’ took over the production. Since its first airing in April of last year, Annie’s Tower of God has ranked first in the weekly popular animation rankings in the American community’Reddit’. In addition, it was ranked in the top 3 for 12 consecutive weeks on’Anime Trending’, an animation popular research site. With the success of the Tower of God box office, Naver Webtoons’God of High School’ and’Noblesse’ were also produced as animations one after another and aired in the United States and Japan.
Although it entered the global market before God’s Tower Annie, the work that received attention lately was’Itaewon Class’. The next webtoon, Itaewon Class, was rereleased in Japan in 2017 as a webtoon titled “Roppongi Class”. The Roppongi Class did not shine until about three years later, as a drama based on the original Itaewon Class last year became very popular in Japan through Netflix. Roppongi Class sales rose 454% year-on-year on Kakao’s Japanese webtoon platform’Piccoma’ in June last year, when the popularity of Itaewon Class dramas was in full swing.
It is analyzed that the success of K-webtoon-based contents successively globally is a product of the world’s unrivaled domestic webtoon system. It is thanks to the fact that the door is wide open so that anyone can draw works through a platform called webtoon, freeing from the traditional apprenticeship. As a result, novel and interesting materials were poured into the comic book market, and good works naturally led to the secondary creation. Naver and Kakao are dominating the global market by introducing webtoon systems in the US and Japan based on their know-how in Korea.
Kakao is currently the number one operator in the Japanese market through Piccoma. This year, Kakao Page is preparing to launch services in Taiwan and Thailand. In addition, synergy with the North American webtoon platform Tapas, which Kakao Page acquired last year, is also expected. After becoming the second largest shareholder of Tapas, Kakao Page supplied major intellectual property (IP) to Tapas between July and November of last year, and generated sales of $850,000 (approximately 950 million won) from only 14 works. This year, in February, the Daum webtoon’Wonderful Rumors’ is planned to be released in English. The phenomenal rumors were already planned as a drama on OCN last year and aired on Netflix, and became as popular as’Sweet Home’.