Industry
Korea's webtoon industry averages ₩8.1bn a business. Three-quarters of it earns under ₩1bn.
396 webtoon businesses were surveyed in 2024. The 28 platforms average ₩94.5bn each; the 368 content providers average ₩1.5bn. The average describes almost nobody, and the studios that draw the comics sit at the bottom of it.
Korea’s webtoon business had 396 companies in it in 2024, and between them they average ₩8.06 billion of webtoon revenue each.
That number is true and it describes almost nobody. 76.4% of these businesses earn under ₩1 billion. The mean sits eight times above the bracket that three-quarters of the industry lives in, because a small group at the top is very large.
Two economies, sharing a name
The survey splits the industry two ways: platforms, who distribute, and content providers, who make the work. There are 28 of the first and 368 of the second.
| Businesses | Average webtoon revenue | Earning under ₩1bn | Earning ₩10bn+ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platforms | 28 | ₩94.5bn | 51.8% | 39.3% |
| Content providers | 368 | ₩1.5bn | 78.3% | 5.3% |
| All | 396 | ₩8.1bn | 76.4% | 7.7% |
A platform averages 63 times what a content provider averages. Seven per cent of the businesses account for the shape of the whole distribution.
Break it down by what a company actually does and the same line appears in a different place.
| Main business | Businesses | Average revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Webtoon service provision | 31 | ₩85.3bn |
| Distribution and brokerage | 65 | ₩1.6bn |
| Planning and production | 247 | ₩1.4bn |
| Publishing | 28 | ₩1.5bn |
| Other | 24 | ₩2.0bn |
247 of the 396 businesses — the clear majority — are the ones that plan and produce the comics. They average ₩1.4 billion. The 31 that provide the service average sixty times that.
This is not an accusation of anything. Distribution businesses are capital-heavy and serve the whole market at once; production studios are small by nature. But it is worth stating plainly, because “the Korean webtoon industry” is usually described with a single number, and a single number here averages two economies that do not resemble each other.
The smaller you are, the more exposed you are
The survey asks a second question: what share of your total revenue comes from webtoons?
| 75%+ from webtoons | Under 25% from webtoons | |
|---|---|---|
| Under 10 staff (214) | 67.5% | 21.3% |
| 10–49 staff (129) | 55.8% | 26.3% |
| 50+ staff (53) | 36.1% | 35.4% |
Two-thirds of the businesses with fewer than ten people get three-quarters or more of everything they earn from webtoons. Among firms of fifty or more, only a third do.
So the companies with the least cushion are the ones with the least diversification. If webtoon demand moves, it moves through the smallest firms first and hardest — and those firms are 214 of the 396.
Why this number is worth having
Webtoons are cited constantly as the next Korean cultural export, usually with a market-size figure attached. The market size is real. What the size does not tell you is that the industry behind it is 28 large distributors and several hundred small studios, and that most of the studios are earning under a billion won while carrying nearly all of their risk in one product.
Counting the businesses rather than the market is the difference between knowing an industry is big and knowing who is in it.
출처: 국가데이터처 KOSIS, 한국콘텐츠진흥원 「웹툰산업실태조사」, 기준 2024년.
Where these numbers come from
Sources
- Korea Creative Content Agency (한국콘텐츠진흥원) — 웹툰산업실태조사 (Webtoon Industry Survey), tables DT_467002_A005 and DT_467002_A004, reference year 2024, via KOSIS open API · https://kosis.kr
What we checked
- Both tables come from the same survey and the same 396 responding businesses, so the revenue split and the webtoon-share split describe one population, not two
- The revenue figures are the survey's own reported averages of webtoon-related revenue per business, in millions of won. They are read as published and not recomputed: total 8,061; platforms 94,468.4; content providers 1,486.5
- The segment counts add up to the whole — 28 platforms plus 368 content providers is 396 — and the main-business breakdown (31 + 65 + 247 + 28 + 24) is 395, one short of the total, which is how the survey publishes it
- The share-of-revenue table is a separate question in the same survey: what proportion of a business's total revenue comes from webtoons. It is not derived from the revenue table
What we left out, and why
- Any year-on-year change. KOSIS publishes this table for 2024 only, so nothing here says the industry is growing or shrinking. The reference year is stated on every figure
- Any conversion to dollars. The survey reports won and we did not pick an exchange rate to translate it
- Creator earnings. This surveys businesses, not the artists who draw for them. A studio's revenue is not a cartoonist's income and the survey does not ask about the second
- Anything about platforms named in the press — Naver Webtoon, Kakao Page and the rest. The survey reports 28 platforms as a group and does not identify them, so no company is named here
- Export and overseas revenue. The tables read here cover webtoon-related revenue without splitting domestic from foreign