Webtoons

What are Webtoons?

Webtoons are digital comics originating from South Korea. Webtoons were quite unpopular some for time. However, with the rise in popularity of digital Manhwa, so did Webtoons get their time to shine. With growing demand, there’s now a wide variety of Webtoons, and they are not solely based on South Korea anymore.

What's the difference between Comics/Manga and Webtoons?

Three differences set Comics and Webtoons apart. Webtoons are usually colored, unlike Comics that typically use white and black. Instead of using multiple pages and box models, Webtoons are designed for phone experience. Webtoons are published on a verticle strip, enabling them to be spread out across the infinite canvas. Some Webtoons will have features like animation, or music playing while reading new episodes.

Where can I read webtoons?

Check out our post on the best websites where you can read webtoons. Hopefully, it helps you find a good webtoon source. We will keep updating the post regularly in case a site shuts down.

Origins and History of Webtoons

The first-ever platform to publish webtoons launched in 2003. Daum Webtoons, a web portal in native South Korean language. Aside from the webcomics, Daum also offered shopping, forum, news, emails, and messaging services. Following Daum, in 2004, Naver launches its Webtoon service in 2004 that would later be renamed (in 2014) and known as the LINE Webtoon app. LINE is currently one of the most popular webtoon platforms out there as it features both native and translated webtoons, making it much more approachable to the western culture. An interesting thing about the origins of Naver is that they are the first Korean company to create its Search Engine. But can we thank LINE for bringing us first translated comics? It was TappyToon and SpotToon that first started officially translating webtoons back in 2010. However, the SpotToon website has not been functional since the end of 2019. And there has been no official news regarding this matter. Alongside these two, Lezhin comics and Toomics emerged with their self translated works.