[Photo by AP/Yonhap]
Helped by the success of its overseas subsidiary Line, foreign-language webtoons published by South Korean internet search giant Naver have gained popularity in Asia, posting an accumulated total of 5.1 billion reads in two years.
Naver launched its webcomics in English, Chinese, Indonesian and Thai languages from July 2004 through Line Corp., a Japan-based global chat app operator.
As of June this year, some 18 million foreigners read Line's webtoons regularly every month, compared to 17 million at home. For two years, the foreign-language webtoons have collected some 5.4 billion reads. Line is now supported by 127 webcomic creators who have run or are running a total of 197 works.
Foreign readers of Line's webtoons have come mostly from Asian countries, but Naver has vowed to expand their service into other regions.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
