As Korea’s production industry debates the impact of Netflix’s involvement in Korean content, domestic platform giant Naver Webtoon has unveiled upsized global storytelling ambitions and an expanded relationship with its writers and creators.

The revamped “Partners Profit Share Program”, shared by Naver Webtoon CEO Jun-koo Kim during a media briefing at the end of April, is based on the platform’s 10-year-old “page profit share” (PPS) arrangement. 

The PPS gives writers and creators a share of advertising, paid content sales and IP business revenue related to their work. Naver Webtoon’s authors can get up to 70% in royalties from their webtoons, Kim said. 

Explaining the PPS rebrand, Kim said “In the past, the focus was on sharing the revenue generated from the pages within the digital comics and web novel platform, but in the future, sales generated through various businesses based on the original IP will also grow. We are dedicated to providing creators with new opportunities for success”.

The new partnership programme also offers writers more sophisticated technology and support tools.

Naver Webtoon, which has 85.6 million monthly active users around the world, is planning to list in the U.S. in the next two to three years. 

Putting the webtoon platform in play against the likes of Netflix, YouTube and TikTok, Kim said Webtoon’s PPS ecosystem had swelled from KRW23.2 billion/US$16.7 million (gross merchandise value/GMV) in 2013 to KRW2.25 trillion won/US$1.7 billion by the end of last year – an increase of more than 87x. 

Over the same period, the number of webtoons that hit KRW100 million/US$75,000 swelled to more than 900, compared to a single title in 2013.

Kim aims to more than double that number within five years to 2,000. By 2025, he plans to have 500 or more titles generate average monthly IP business sales of KRW5 million/US$4,000.

In 2022, 136 titles generated more than KRW1 billion/US$747,000 GMV.

Five of the properties on the platform currently generate KRW10 billion/US$7.5 million a year or more, and more than half of the titles in Korea are generating sales overseas. 40 titles have exceeded one billion cumulative views. 

“When manuscript fees were virtually the only source of income for creators a decade ago, we envisioned the PPS programme as a means for creators to work in a more stable environment that would enable them to focus on their craft. Our goal was to establish digital comics as a global industry,” Kim said.