20 Years of NAVER WEBTOON Growing Together with Creators and Users, and the Story Ahead
20 Years of NAVER WEBTOON Growing Together with Creators and Users, and the Story Ahead
In December 2025, NAVER WEBTOON service marked the 20th anniversary of its official launch. Looking back on the journey it has taken to build an ecosystem in which creators around the world can fully express their imagination and potential through creation, and where readers can experience enjoyment and emotional resonance through stories, NAVER WEBTOON also shares its vision for the future.
NAVER WEBTOON growing together with creators and users for 20 years
Key NAVER WEBTOON hits discovered through “WEBTOON Challenge”
Amid the rapid decline of the Korean comics industry following the successive closures of print comics magazines in the early 2000s, NAVER WEBTOON emerged as a new platform of opportunity. In 2006, NAVER WEBTOON introduced “WEBTOON Challenge,” creating an open platform environment where anyone could become a WEBTOON creator. As a result, a wide range of works including “The Sound of Your Heart” (Cho Seok), “Noblesse” (Son Je-ho and Lee Kwang-soo), “Tower of God” (SIU), “All of Us Are Dead” (Joo Dong-geun), “Yumi’s Cells” (Lee Dong-gun), and “My Daughter is a Zombie” (Lee Yoon-chang) were discovered, bringing new vitality to Korea’s webtoon creation ecosystem.
Beginning in 2012 with the industry’s first introduction of a preview feature, NAVER WEBTOON established a diversified creator revenue model that enables creators to generate more stable income and focus on their work. This was achieved through paid webtoon sales introduced in 2013, revenue sharing from advertising, sales of webtoon-related products, and more. In 2016, NAVER WEBTOON introduced the cookie system*, taking the lead in the popularization of paid content consumption. In addition, it has continued its efforts to create an environment where creators can focus more fully on their work by institutionalizing health checkups for serialized creators for the first time in the industry.
*Cookie: Payment currency required to access paid episodes of webtoons and web novels.
In June 2024, WEBTOON Entertainment, the U.S. headquarters of NAVER WEBTOON, was listed on NASDAQ. This marked an important milestone in which webtoon, which first originated in Korea, were recognized as a new entertainment industry category in the global market, and also presented another opportunity to demonstrate the industrial and commercial value of webtoons.
NAVER WEBTOON’s efforts to foster a healthy ecosystem for creating and enjoying content
From the early days of its service, NAVER WEBTOON has placed the development of a creator ecosystem at the core of its values, building an environment where creators can create with stability and readers can enjoy high quality content. These efforts have expanded into NAVER WEBTOON’s shared growth program named “WEBTOON With,” which encompasses “WEBTOON Challenge” and the diversified creator revenue model. Through this program, creators, readers, and partners grow together, forming a virtuous cycle that strengthens content competitiveness and expands business opportunities.
One of the key initiatives under “WEBTOON With” is “Toon Radar,” an internally developed technology to block illegal distribution. Since July 2017, “Toon Radar” has played a central role in protecting revenue that should rightfully return to creators by tracking illegal copies of webtoons both in Korea and overseas, predicting suspicious user activity, and enabling preemptive blocking.
In addition, NAVER WEBTOON continues to enhance its AI-based recommendation system to help readers more easily discover works that match their preferences, while enabling emerging creators with lower visibility to gain meaningful opportunities for connection. Beyond this, it is pursuing a range of initiatives to build a sustainable creator ecosystem, including supporting creators as they expand into global markets and researching technologies that contribute to the creative ecosystem.
NAVER WEBTOON’s vision to deliver inspiration and enjoyment to fans worldwide
Following its NASDAQ listing, NAVER WEBTOON has been further expanding its presence in the North Americanmarket as a global entertainment platform. In March of this year, it became the first company in Korea and the first webtoon and web novel platform to join the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), a copyright protection organization under the Motion Picture Association, gaining recognition as a global partner in the media and entertainment industry that places strong emphasis on the protection of creators and IP. In the second half of the year, NAVER formed partnerships with major entertainment companies such as The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. Animation, demonstrating not only the distinct competitiveness of its platform but also the potential of webtoon as an original content.
Going forward, NAVER WEBTOON will continue to realize its vision of delivering enjoyment and inspiration to audiences around the world through storytelling content.
