Webtoon Entertainment, the most popular digital comic-hosting platform, has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on the tech-rich US Nasdaq stock exchange.
Webtoon Entertainment, which is owned by the South Korean tech giant Naver, could reach a valuation of more than US$2.6 billion (HK$20.3 billion) after the IPO, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on June 17.
But when Bae started out, his parents – like many people at the time – did not consider being a comic artist a viable way to make a living, he says.
Having started from the absolute bottom, even the smallest of gains has always brought me joy
Even his friends were worried about his career choice as he “couldn’t draw”.
But he taught himself how – by taking photographs of himself and his surroundings and then copying them with a pen – while working part-time at a convenience store and delivering pizzas.
Readers’ comments that were critical of his early, rudimentary drawings but praised the storyline spurred him to work harder.
In 2012, he posted his breakout horror hit, Friday, on Naver’s Webtoons.
Supported by South Korea’s ultra-fast internet and smartphone-crazy populace, webtoons are fast becoming the country’s latest viral cultural export.
The sector’s value in South Korea went from US$109 million in 2013 to US$1.33 billion by 2022, government figures show.
Webtoon Entertainment, the market leader, has around 170 million monthly active users from more than 150 countries, and says it paid creators over US$2.8 billion between 2017 and 2023.
The “average professional creator is earning US$48,000 a year and the top 100 are earning US$1 million”, according to the platform’s chief executive Junkoo Kim.
One of our goals is to find smaller, potentially undiscovered stories that resonate with original [webtoon] fans and find new audiences
“Actors and actresses are already familiar with these webtoons and eager to play the roles, which provides an advantage in terms of casting,” adds Park, who works for a production label under South Korea’s CJ ENM Studios.
But even as adaptations of webtoon adaptations go global, many readers remain loyal to the original format.
Reading online allows “stories to develop and evolve in real time as the user scrolls”, wrote Webtoon Entertainment’s Kim in the company’s SEC filing.
“The use of white space highlights a character’s isolation and loneliness. A crowded panel creates chaos. Long blank panels build suspense,” he added.
Of the around 14 original South Korean dramas launched by Netflix in 2023, at least seven were based on webtoons.
“One of our goals is to find smaller, potentially undiscovered stories that resonate with original [webtoon] fans and find new audiences worldwide,” Keo Lee, content director at Netflix Korea, says.
“So we ventured into unconventional genres,” he adds.
While webtoons span a variety of themes, creators have particularly addressed “the agony of loser-like younger generations”, according to Dal Yong Jin, the author of a book on the medium titled Understanding Korean Webtoon Culture.
Bae’s Money Game, which inspired Netflix’s The 8 Show, follows a young man who becomes debt-ridden after a failed cryptocurrency investment.
He and seven others decide to participate in a game in which they must survive 100 days in a sealed space – without even a toilet – to win a substantial prize.
What they spend in the space is deducted from the prize, with the cost of living 1,000 times higher than in the real world – a conceit Bae says he came up with while drinking with friends.
The violent, gruesome webtoon has already been made into two YouTube reality shows – one in South Korea and the other in the US.
Bae says that despite the darkness of his works, readers should easily empathise with his characters.
“The hardest thing is to give up what you’ve got,” he says, referring to human nature.
“But having started from the absolute bottom, even the smallest of gains has always brought me joy.”