How Webtoons Changed Comics

For most of their history, comics were made of pages: a fixed grid of panels, read left to right and top to bottom, then turned. Webtoons threw the page away. They are long vertical strips, built to be read by scrolling down a phone screen with one thumb, usually in full colour and published in weekly episodes.

The format began in South Korea and has become one of the most widely read forms of comics in the world. Understanding why means looking at where it came from, how it is paid for, and what scrolling does to the way a story is told.

Born on Korean web portals

Korean comics, called manhwa, were sold in print for decades, but the internet changed the business in the early 2000s. The first webtoon is usually credited to Han Hee-jak, whose Uninhabited Island appeared in 1996. The format took off when the country's big web portals built homes for it: Daum launched Daum Webtoon in 2003, and Naver, the country's largest search company, launched Naver Webtoon in 2004.

South Korea had some of the fastest broadband in the world and an early, enthusiastic smartphone culture. Reading comics in short episodes on a screen fitted the way people already used the internet, on commutes and in spare minutes, and the portals had the audiences to make new creators visible overnight.

Built for scrolling

A webtoon episode is a single long vertical strip rather than a set of pages. That sounds like a small change, but it alters how comics work. On a page, the reader's eye can take in several panels at once, and a big reveal has to be hidden by a page turn. In a scroll, panels arrive one at a time, and the space between them becomes a tool: a long empty stretch can build suspense, slow a moment down or drop a joke.

Webtoons are usually in colour and sometimes include music or small animations. Many artists design for the narrow width of a phone, using close-ups and simple backgrounds that read well at small sizes. Our guide on how to read a comic explains the conventions of the page that webtoons rework.

Free to read, paid to read ahead

The business model is different from print. On many platforms, a set of chapters is free and the rest must be paid for; others allow a limited number of free reads a day. Readers often pay small amounts to read ahead of the free schedule, and creators earn from advertising, with pay that depends on how many people read their work. Until 2019, amateur creators could also earn from credit that fans gave them directly.

That model rewards regular publication and cliffhangers, and it lets readers sample a series before spending anything. It also puts heavy pressure on artists to deliver full-colour episodes every week, a strain that has become a recurring subject of debate in the industry.

Going global

In July 2014, LINE, a subsidiary of Naver, began publishing English translations through its Webtoon service, and the format spread far beyond Korea. Naver has reported more than 6.2 million daily users at home, and as of September 2023, Naver Webtoon had 180 million monthly active users worldwide. Estimates of the global market for webtoons and the products built on them run into billions of dollars.

Webtoons have also crossed back into print. The printed French edition of Solo Leveling, a series that began as a Korean web novel and was adapted into a webtoon, sold more than 900,000 copies of its first six volumes, showing that a format built for phones can work on paper too.

From scroll to screen

Korean comics were feeding film and television long before webtoons existed. Tazza, a 2006 film based on Huh Young-man's comic, was followed by two more films and a television series, and the pattern has only grown since webtoons arrived. A popular webtoon comes with a built-in audience and a story already tested in weekly episodes, which makes it attractive to studios and streaming services.

Platforms began introducing a rating system in 2019, with about ten services, including Naver and Daum, expected to take part, a sign of how mainstream the medium had become in its home country.

What webtoons changed

Webtoons did not replace printed comics, but they changed what comics can be. They showed that a story can be designed around a device rather than a page, that colour can be standard rather than a luxury, and that millions of people who never set foot in a comic shop will read comics if they arrive in their pocket.

They also continue a long tradition of comics adapting to how people read: from newspaper strips, traced in our short history of the comic strip, to monthly comic books and Japanese manga. For how manga and Western comics differ in the same ways, see manga vs Western comics.