Ministry of Culture Industry Survey
The Largest Export Country is Japan, An AI-generated image related to the Korean webtoon industry.,
The Korean webtoon industry achieved nearly a 20% growth rate in 2023, surpassing 2 trillion won in sales for the first time.
According to the ‘2024 Webtoon Industry Survey’ report published by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Creative Content Agency on the 2nd, the total sales of the webtoon industry in 2023 were 2.189 trillion won, a 19.7% increase from the previous year’s performance (1.829 trillion won).
Since the Ministry of Culture and the Korea Creative Content Agency conducted related industry surveys in 2018, the webtoon industry sales have consistently shown growth over six years, surpassing 2 trillion won for the first time.
In 2017, sales were only 379.9 billion won, but in 2020, they exceeded the 1 trillion mark, recording 1.0538 trillion won.
It was found that most of the sales came from platform companies.
In 2023, platform companies’ sales were 1.4094 trillion won, accounting for 64.4% of the total sales of the webtoon industry. This marked a 25.0% increase from the previous year (1.1277 trillion won), indicating steady growth.
In terms of webtoon exports, Japan accounted for the largest share at 40.3%, followed by North America (19.7%), Greater China (15.6%), Southeast Asia (12.3%), and Europe (8.2%).
As for the export format, online transmission rights accounted for 80.6%, followed by publishing rights (12.1%), secondary work creation licenses (3.0%), and OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) exports (1.4%).
Despite the industry’s growth, creators’ incomes remained low. The median annual income of webtoon authors who published works throughout 2023 was only 38 million won. The median represents the annual income earned by the author in the middle, when align annual incomes in order.
The median monthly household income for Koreans (for a family of four) in 2023 was 5.4 million won. This translates to an annual income of 64.8 million won, nearly twice that of webtoon authors’ annual earnings.
Overwork, a chronic issue in the webtoon industry, was found to have worsened compared to the previous year.
Webtoon authors spent, on average, 5.9 days per week engaged in creative activities, up 0.1 days from the previous year (5.8 days). On days spent creating, they reported an average of 10.1 hours dedicated to creative activities, a 0.6-hour increase from the previous year (9.5 hours).