(AP file photo via Yonhap)
Big tech’s encroachment on the South Korean webcomic market, largely dominated by local players in the past two decades, has just begun, fanning fears that they would soon fully invade the market after they successfully tightened the grip on 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 reached 20.9%, up 7.3 percentage points higher than 2023 and three times higher from 2021.
This year, Instagram ranked Korea’s fourth most-used digital comic 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 webcomic 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 Entertainment booth at the 2024 World Webtoon Festival in Seoul in September 2024 (Courtesy of Yonhap)
Kakao Webtoon, first serviced in 2003, used to be one of Korea’s leading webcomic platforms with many star creators.
“INSTAFOBIA”
The Korean content industry, however, has predicted Instagram’s fast inroad 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 stories.
Instagram launched a content support program in December last year to help webcomic creators earn revenue by publishing their stories on Instagram.
Local governments also joined the move, hosting Insta Toon contests to promote local creators.
Insta Toon comic contest hosted by Gangnam District office
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 comic 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 comic 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.
Korean webcomic promotional booth at New York Comic Corn 2024 (Courtesy of Yonhap)
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 it down 3.3%.
Google is also seeking to take advantage of the vibrant Korean webcomic 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 comic 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, within this year.
By Ju-Hyun Lee
deep@hankyung.com
Sookyung Seo edited this article.
