4 ms·

Korea in much stricter on Copyright issues, and Kakao is losing 10 millions USD on webtoons yearly.

• naitgacem 3y ago
  What do you mean by losing 10 millions USD on webtoons? genuinely asking
  • pm3003 3y ago
    I'm too lazy to find the source again in Korean media, but they've bet heavily on the Webtoon craze, trying to compete with Naver. I don't know the details, but from what I can see from Naver, this means paying professional artist teams to make higher quality content , e.g. by turning light novels into webtoons and manhwa, hiring editors to coach young artists, spending on marketing and delivery, sponsoring well-known artists and licensing content from other players and maybe paying for anime adaptations. They also acquired quite a few publishers in the last few years. From what I gather, it doesn't pay off (yet?), in part because they have relatively few paying readers (pay or wait until free model). Nonetheless, they're still investing in the sector. The recent push against piracy is to protect Solo Leveling, one of their few cash cows. I don't know how the corporate turmoil of the mother corporation plays into that (Kakao does mainly Music entertainment), or if it is even above the noise among Korean scandals but it certainly doesn't help. All of this in the Korean context where copyright is taken very seriously.