The webtoon was not invented for export. It was invented for the Seoul subway — a format for reading comics on a vertical phone screen during a commute, without the page-turn friction of traditional manga or print comics. That the format would become one of South Korea's most valuable cultural exports was not, initially, part of anyone's plan.

South Korea's two dominant platforms, Naver Webtoon and Kakao Webtoon, now operate in 150 countries and host more than 800,000 individual series. Combined global platform revenue reached $10.2 billion in 2024, according to Korea Creative Content Agency figures — a figure that excludes the substantial downstream value generated by adaptations. Of the 140 television dramas and films adapted from webtoon source material in the past three years, 28 have become internationally distributed hits on Netflix, Disney+, or Hulu.

The industry's pipeline model — allowing unknown creators to publish freely, with algorithmic and reader data identifying breakout properties before any acquisition decision is made — has attracted attention from Hollywood studios that have struggled to predict which intellectual property will translate across markets. Three major US studios have signed output deals with Naver Webtoon that give them first-look rights on properties crossing specified readership thresholds.

The Korean government, through the Ministry of Culture's Content Korea Lab programme, provides subsidised international co-production financing, translation grants covering 22 languages, and market entry support that has enabled smaller independent webtoon studios to establish presences in Southeast Asian, North American, and European markets without platform intermediary dependency.

"We did not plan to export stories," said Naver Webtoon CEO Kim Jun-kyu. "We built something that people wanted to read. The rest followed."