Photo from the left, Keita Iwamoto (SHINE Partners), Takashi Sasaki (TBS Television), Kim Junkoo (NAVER WEBTOON)

Tokyo Broadcasting System Television, Inc. (TBS) has reached an agreement with South Korea’s market-leading digital comics platform NAVER WEBTOON, a subsidiary of the country’s largest ICT company NAVER, along with Japanese manga production company SHINE Partners, to launch Studio TooN, a new webtoon production company, in South Korea as a joint venture of three companies.

With this new venture, TBS aims not only to enter the webtoon production business, but also to enhance its offering of content aimed at global audiences, by developing original webtoons with Japanese and Korean creators, and adapting them into TV dramas, anime and other content.

Studio TooN is the first group company established by TBS in South Korea.

TBS Television President Takashi Sasaki commented on the establishment of the new company: “As we take on the challenge of entering the emerging field of webtoons, we are grateful for the cooperation of NAVER WEBTOON, the leading webtoon company in South Korea, and indeed the world, and of the pioneering Japanese company SHINE Partners. Going forward, the world can also look forward to exciting new webtoon-based video content from TBS.”

Kim Junkoo, CEO and founder of NAVER WEBTOON, said, " When webtoon works are visualized, there is a synergy effect as the number of readers increases. We are delighted to be partnering with TBS, Japan's leading content production company. We look forward to working together to develop diverse webtoons even further."

Studio TooN will be headed by Keita Iwamoto, President of SHINE Partners.

Webtoons constitute a rapidly expanding market, not only in their native South Korea, but also in Europe, the United States, and Southeast Asia. Providing the source material for many of the Korean TV dramas now taking the world by storm, they have already proved highly popular in their own right.

■ Projected outline of the new company Studio TooN
Studio TooN is scheduled to be established in May 2022, and to begin operations in June 2022. Its head office will be in Seoul, South Korea, and its CEO will be Keita Iwamoto. Its main business will be the planning, development, production, and copyright management of webtoons.

■ About webtoons
A form of digital comic designed to be read on smartphones and other devices, webtoons originated in South Korea and are now increasingly popular all over the world. Typically published in full color, the content is presented in a vertical, ribbon-like format, to be read by scrolling down, one panel at a time. In contrast Japanese manga are typically published in black and white, and read horizontally from right to left, with several panels per page.

■ About NAVER WEBTOON
NAVER WEBTOON, which is an affiliate company of LINE Digital Frontier, is the world’s largest digital comics platform, home to some of the biggest artists, IP, and fandoms in comics. NAVER WEBTOON belongs to the NAVER group, South Korea's largest ICT company, and operates "LINE MANGA" in Japan. As the global leader and pioneer of the mobile webcomic format, WEBTOON has revolutionized the comics industry for comic fans and creators. With an average of 82+ million monthly active users, original titles such as "True Beauty", " Hellbound" and " All of Us Are Dead" have been adapted into films and TV series gaining great popularity worldwide. With a massive catalog of incredible digital comics, NAVER WEBTOON is expanding its business domain into various value-added industries such as movies, dramas, games, and other publishing business based on its original webcomics and web-novel IPs.

■ About SHINE Partners
SHINE Partners was established in 2016 by its President Keita Iwamoto, as Japan's only webtoon-specialist manga production company. At the time, Iwamoto had just returned to Japan after working at a manga editing and production company in South Korea at the dawn of the webtoon industry. Major original titles published by SHINE Partners include Revenge Love and It Always Rains on Big Days.
 

Contact
TBS Television, Inc. DX Business Division
Hideto Komazuka
E-mail: komazuka.hideto@tbs.co.jp