South Korea and Naver are synonymous with each other. Korea's major search portal, Naver, revolutionized the comics industry via NAVER WEBTOON. It has enabled a platform that puts creators and consumers first - where creators can truly meet their audience.
Emergence of Naver Webtoon
Naver officially launched their webtoon service in Korea way back in December 2005. Soon thereafter, in 2014, it launched the English global service webtoon, the traditional Chinese line webtoon, and the Thai line webtoon services. A year later, it launched in Indonesia and subsequently in Japan. In 2017, the Naver Webtoon Corp. was established. At present, its offices are in five countries - Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, and USA.
Source: https://webtoonscorp.com/en/
Webtoon X Wattpad - Bringing stories to life
The webtoon service has achieved many laurels and launched many services including Naver Web Novels, Naver series, and Wattpad. The world's leading web-novel and most loved social storytelling platform, Wattpad, connects a global community of 85 million readers and writers who spend over 23 billion minutes a month. In three simple steps- create, build, amplify, one can turn their original story into a tv series, movie, or film for renowned companies such as Sony Pictures, Hulu, and SYFY. By leveraging the 50+ writing resources of Wattpad, more than 1000 story deals have been secured till date.
Source: https://webtoonscorp.com/en/
The journey of Naver Webtoon that started in 2005 has brought several digital layers that are being heavily enjoyed by all, more specifically Gen-Z. It also goes to show the popularity of reading and writing globally. Lastly, with several competitors springing up to this fact like Miraquill and Sweek, it shall be interesting to witness the future trends in this space especially in relation to user engagement and monetization strategies.