Webtoons: The Vertical-Scroll Comics Korea Invented — and the Road to Netflix

Watch a few Korean dramas on Netflix and the same phrase keeps rolling past in the credits. Based on the webtoon. Hellbound, All of Us Are Dead, Sweet Home, Mask Girl, and Study Group — which hit No. 6 worldwide on Netflix in the first half of 2026 — all started as webtoons.

The word “webtoon” itself is surprisingly hard to explain outside Korea. It’s not manhwa, it’s not manga, and “webcomic” doesn’t quite do it justice. The most accurate description is this: a webtoon is the comic format Korea re-invented for the smartphone era — and right now it’s both an industry in its own right and a factory for dramas.

What Makes a Webtoon Different, Anyway?

The biggest difference is the reading direction. Print comics turn pages; Japanese manga reads right to left. A webtoon just keeps scrolling, top to bottom. There’s no page at all.

Why does that matter? Because once the page disappears, the artist gains control of time. Stretch a black gutter across three screens’ worth of space before the next panel, and the reader genuinely waits those extra seconds while scrolling through it. That’s why horror webtoons hit so hard — an effect that’s impossible on paper, where the next page is already peeking into your field of vision.

No printing means color is free, too. Unlike Japanese manga, which defaults to black and white, webtoons have been almost entirely full color from day one.

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When Did It All Start?

Portals began serving comics in 2000, but that was closer to an online manhwabang — scanned print comics uploaded to the web. The webtoon as we know it took shape between 2003 and 2006.

📜 Two decades of webtoons — how a format became an industry

Year	Event	Why it mattered
2000	Lycos Korea and Naver launch comics sections	Still mostly scans of print comics
2003	Daum launches Manhwa Soksesang; Kang Full serializes Sunjeong Manhwa	The vertical-scroll drama genre breaks out and the format sticks
2004	Naver records June 23, 2004 as the start of its webtoon service	Started single-handedly by Kim Jun-koo, a new-hire manhwa fan
2005	Naver Webtoon’s first three original series (Golbang Fantasy, Banana Girl, Sarang In)	A bet on rookie gag artists over established names
2006	Challenge Comics section opens; weekday serialization system introduced	The prototype of the “anyone can post and get promoted” debut pipeline
2013	Lezhin Comics launches the paid webtoon model	First to break the “comics are free” assumption
2014	KakaoPage introduces the wait-to-unlock model; LINE Webtoon goes global	Monetization and global expansion open at the same time
2024	Webtoon Entertainment lists on Nasdaq (WBTN)	Webtoons become a publicly traded US industry

A representative early hit like The Sound of Your Heart ran for 14 years and 1,229 episodes, racking up 7 billion cumulative views. When a medium pulls numbers like that, finding a revenue model beyond ads was only a matter of time.

How Big Is the Industry?

According to the “2025 Webtoon Industry Survey” released by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Creative Content Agency in December 2025, Korea’s webtoon industry was worth ₩2.2856 trillion in 2024 — up 4.4% from the year before.

The numbers look like a steady climb, but the pace has clearly broken. In 2023 the industry grew 19.7% year over year and crossed ₩2 trillion for the first time; in 2024 growth settled at 4.4%. That’s a market nearing saturation — which is exactly why the industry is now betting hard on two things: overseas markets and screen adaptations.

🌏 Webtoon exports by region (Korea Creative Content Agency survey)

Region	2023	2024	Change
Japan	40.3%	49.5%	Big jump
North America	19.7%	21.0%	Slight rise
Greater China	15.6%	13.0%	Down
Southeast Asia	12.3%	9.5%	Down
Europe	8.2%	6.2%	Down

The Japan tilt is striking. Exporting comics to the home of manga sounds absurd, but Korean comic apps (Piccoma, LINE Manga) actually take turns at No. 1 in Japanese app revenue — games included.

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Who Are the Platforms?

Broadly, the market splits into the Naver camp, the Kakao camp, and the smaller platforms carving out niches between them.

📱 Major Korean webtoon platforms (as of 2026)

Platform	Operator	Core market	Notes
Naver Webtoon	Webtoon Entertainment (Naver)	Korea	The biggest in Korea; originator of the Challenge Comics promotion system
WEBTOON	Webtoon Entertainment	English-speaking markets	Entered 2014; runs the amateur creator platform Canvas
LINE Manga	Webtoon Entertainment	Japan	No. 1 in Japanese app-market revenue including games in Q3 2025
KakaoPage	Kakao Entertainment	Korea	First to introduce wait-to-unlock in 2014
Kakao Webtoon	Kakao Entertainment	Korea	Successor to Daum Manhwa Soksesang
Piccoma	Kakao Piccoma	Japan · France	Longtime No. 1 in Japanese manga app revenue
Lezhin Comics	Lezhin Entertainment	Korea · English markets	First to establish paid webtoons in 2013
RIDI	RIDI	Korea · North America	E-book roots; runs the North American subscription service Manta

And lately, Instatoons — comics posted on Instagram — have surged. Because creators reach readers directly, bypassing platforms entirely, they’re a variable the industry is watching closely as big-platform paid purchases flatten out.

So How Does Anyone Make Money?

The core is paid previews. Completed episodes and anything a few chapters back are free; only the newest episodes cost money.

There’s one more, though. Secondary IP rights. Licensing fees for dramas, films, animation, games, and merchandise — this is what the industry is really chasing. Domestic payment revenue has plateaued, but screen-adaptation rights still have no visible ceiling.

How Much Do Creators Actually Earn?

From here the numbers get less fun. An industry worth ₩2 trillion doesn’t mean that money reaches creators evenly.

Close to six days a week, ten-plus hours a day, for ₩38 million before tax. Convert it to an hourly rate and a minimum-wage argument becomes unavoidable — one creators are genuinely having among themselves.

The pain points creators themselves rank highest point straight back at that structure.

😵 What webtoon creators cite as their biggest hardships (top 1+2+3 responses)

Rank	Hardship	Response rate
1	Too little time for work-life balance under deadline pressure	57.8%
2	Declining mental and physical health from overwork	56.4%
3	Low, irregular income and financial strain between projects	49.4%

The top tier, of course, lives in a different world entirely. The creator of a series with hundreds of millions of views can earn billions of won a year, and those stories — recycled endlessly in the press — once put “webtoon artist” near the top of Korean schoolkids’ dream jobs. But those cases don’t represent the average. Webtoons are a brutally winner-take-all market.

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Why Does Netflix Keep Buying Webtoons?

Simple: the story is already proven. A webtoon with 100 million views arrives carrying data that says “at least this many people read this to the end.” What’s more, a webtoon’s panel layout is already close to a storyboard, so the studio gets a free visual blueprint.

🎬 Notable screen adaptations based on webtoons

Title	Original platform	Screen platform	Released
Itaewon Class	Daum Webtoon (now Kakao Webtoon)	JTBC · Netflix	2020
Sweet Home	Naver Webtoon	Netflix	2020–2024 (S3)
Hellbound	Naver Webtoon	Netflix	2021
All of Us Are Dead	Naver Webtoon	Netflix	2022
Moving	Daum Webtoon (now Kakao Webtoon)	Disney+	2023
Mask Girl	Naver Webtoon	Netflix	2023
Bloodhounds	Naver Webtoon	Netflix	2023 (S2 2026)
The Trauma Code	Web novel → Naver Webtoon	Netflix	2025
Manager Kim	Naver Webtoon	SBS	2026
Study Group	Naver Webtoon	Netflix	2026

2026 in particular was the year of the webtoon drama. Netflix’s Study Group logged 48.2 million views in its first month, good for No. 6 worldwide in the first half of 2026 — the only Korean title in the top 10. SBS’s Manager Kim hit a 23.1% peak rating, the second-highest ever for an SBS Friday-Saturday drama.

The reverse effect is just as real. In the two weeks after Bloodhounds Season 2 dropped, global views of the original webtoon jumped 22× compared with the two weeks before the teaser. Drama sells the webtoon; the webtoon becomes the next drama’s source material. A loop.

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Does the Industry Have Problems?

Two big ones loom: piracy and AI.

Pirate webtoon sites are the oldest wound in the Korean content industry. Ever since the Bamtoki case in 2018, they’ve kept reappearing under new names — and as of March 2026 the leading pirate site ranked No. 4 among all websites in Korea by traffic. After Google, YouTube, Naver, and Daum.

In 2026 the government amended the Copyright Act and introduced an emergency blocking system for pirate sites — cutting access first, before a court ruling.

AI is a different story. Background generation and coloring assistance are already in studios, and there’s talk of production speeds multiplying. The problem is training data. The debate over whether existing artists’ work was used without consent continues, and creator groups are demanding standard contracts and copyright protections. The interesting part is that readers have been more forgiving than the industry expected — across multiple surveys, readers say they care more about the final quality than about whether AI was used.

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How Does a Webtoon Creator Debut?

The most distinctive device in the Korean webtoon ecosystem is the amateur promotion system.

There are side effects, of course. When views are the standard, provocative material has an edge — and there have been major controversies over certain titles being promoted.

Where Can You See Webtoons in Person While Traveling?

The surest place to see Korean comics and webtoons in the flesh isn’t in Seoul — it’s in Bucheon.

🎫 Korea Manhwa Museum visitor info

Item	Details
Address	1 Gilju-ro, Wonmi-gu, Bucheon, Gyeonggi-do (Korea Manhwa Contents Agency)
Subway	1-min walk from Exit 5, Samsan Gymnasium Station (Line 7)
Hours	10:00–18:00 (last entry 17:00)
Closed	Every Monday, Jan 1, Lunar New Year and Chuseok (the day and the day before)
Tickets	Standard ₩5,000 / family of 4 ₩16,000, of 3 ₩12,000 / groups of 20+ ₩4,000 per person
Free area	Comics Library on the 2nd floor

📍 Open in Naver Map — Korea Manhwa Museum

It’s one subway ride from central Seoul. Take Line 7 to Samsan Gymnasium Station; from Gangnam it’s about 40–50 minutes. The Korea Manhwa Contents Agency sits on the same grounds, and every fall this is where the Bucheon International Comics Festival happens.

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The Bottom Line

Korea built a new format out of a collapsing comics industry — and in 20 years that format became a ₩2-trillion industry and Netflix’s source-material pipeline. One seemingly trivial choice, the vertical scroll, changed the way people around the world read comics with their thumbs.

But behind the growth are creators drawing ten hours a day for a ₩38-million median, and pirate sites eating 20% of the industry’s size. That’s why webtoons are always talked about in Korea with equal parts pride and worry. The simplest thing a traveler can do: find the original webtoon of a Korean drama you love on an official app and start reading. Even just the free episodes will quickly show you how different the original is from the screen version.