Apple turns to South Korean ‘webtoon’—short, vertical reading, and made for small screens—to revive its Books app

Apple Inc. bet. of Korean web comics to bring exciting life to its Books app.

The Cupertino, California-based company has signed a three-year exclusive contract with the South Korean startup Kenaz in December to supply online comics known as webtoons. The new content was rolled out in Japan last month and will expand to cover all 51 countries where the Book is available, according to the company. The value of the deal was not disclosed.

Webtoons are Korea’s favorite way to consume digital comics and have inspired many of the country’s global hits from dark zombie comedies. We Are All Dead in the monster epic Sweet Home. The format, which has users scrolling through full-color, super-short episodes on their phones or PCs, has been around for decades. Unlike conventional manga or comic books, authors draw webtoons that account for how much screen space is taken up by a scroll-down on a device. In Japan, the genre is known as “tate-yomi-manga,” or vertically-read-manga.

“North America has never had a significant leading player in webtoons,” said Woody Lee, Kenaz’s founder and chief executive. “Apple Books has the opportunity to become a competitive player in this field very quickly.”

Global interest in Korean entertainment has exploded in recent years with the rise of series like Squid game and the Academy Award-winning film Parasite. The Motion Picture Association of America organized a pinnacle of Hollywood executives in Washington last month to take advantage of Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s visit to the US and discuss collaboration.

Read more: Hollywood Execs Flock to Washington to Meet with Korean President

In September, the executives of Libro Kashif Zafar and Sasha Norkin flew to Seoul to discuss the Kenaz deal for three days before making the final call, according to Lee.

It’s been a while since Apple last introduced a new service in its Books app, which didn’t benefit from the huge investment it got in other services like Apple Music and Apple TV. Apple studied webtoons as a potential addition to its portfolio for more than two years before entering into detailed discussions with Kenaz, Lee said.

Apple’s decision to tap the webtoon market underscores the growing appetite for the category. It follows a step by Amazon.com Inc. in March to launch webtoons section on Kindle for Japanese users. In Asia, in Korea Naver corp. and Kakao Corp. is one of the largest distributors, while China Tencent Holdings Ltd. and ByteDance Ltd. also invested in webtoon services.

Apple likely chose Kenaz over bigger players like Naver and Kakao – which publish webtoons on their own, well-developed platforms – to ensure access to original content without any conflict with distribution, Lee said. The founder expects roughly 30% of Kenaz’s webtoons to be first published through Apple Books. Kenaz, home to about 140 authors, was valued at 86 billion won ($65 million) during its most recent funding round. The company plans another round of funding later this year and will go public next year.

Kenaz is now working David Franzoniwho wrote Hollywood blockbusters Gladiator, to recreate the story through a webtoon series. The startup also works with the famous French writer Bernard Werber to convert his Ants trilogy of novels to online comics. Its webtoon service for Apple Books in North America will launch in the near future, Lee said.

“There’s a lot of demand for original intellectual property content these days,” Lee said. “The new hot topic in the content market is identifying an IP story with growth potential and creating an entire value chain from it.”

–With help from Sohee Kim.



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