South Korea’s Kakao Entertainment Corp. has bought the world’s top Asian fantasy web novel platform Wuxiaworld, based in the US, to expand its content business in North America along with the online comic app
Tapas and serialized fiction app Radish Fiction acquired earlier this year.“Kakao Entertainment has proven its own success equation including premium intellectual property (IP), advanced platforms and marketing specialized in story IP through a series of successes in Japan, Thailand and Taiwan,” said its CEO Lee Jin-soo. “We will focus on growth in North America and ASEAN markets based on the success equation. North America will be a core foothold with an IP story triangle formation with Tapas, Radish and Wuxiaworld.”
The online comic, talent agency and movie-making unit of South Korea’s platform giant Kakao Corp. aims to develop its webtoons and web novels to the global mainstream and help its creators to make inroads into the international market, Lee said.
North America is the world’s largest entertainment market, with a strong influence on the global content market.
Kakao Entertainment aims to grow to a major IP producer that competes with global content providers based on strong influence in the US market.
ENHANCE CONTENT CAPABILITY IN NORTH AMERICAWuxiaworld, founded in 2014 by Jingping Lai, a former US diplomat, logged a 40% growth in sales every year without mass marketing and promotion. The service is the only platform that targets male users, providing fantasy fiction such as martial arts novels. It generates about 85% of its revenue from subscriptions.
Kakao Entertainment acquired Wuxiaworld through its US subsidiary Radish, a platform that provides female-oriented content such as romance fiction. Kakao Entertainment expected the acquisition to create various synergies as it combines platforms of different genre characteristics, enhancing content capability in North America, and loyal users.
Wuxiaworld has been providing Kakao Entertainment’s IP including its famous fiction Overgeared with some 5% of Kakao Entertainment’s IP generating a quarter of the platform’s total sales.
Kakao Entertainment aims to develop Wuxiaworld further through various measures such as supplying English versions of its male-oriented fiction IP and upgrading its website and mobile app.
“Demand for South Korea’s leading IP discovered by Kakao Entertainment is strong in Wuxiaworld, a premium service generating most of its total revenue from regular subscriptions,” said Lee Sung-yoon, Kakao Entertainment’s global strategy officer and Radish’s CEO.
“We will actively supply Kakao Entertainment’s IP and combine Radish's unique British-American business know-how to reorganize the North American web novel market.”
The acquisition is in line with Kakao Entertainment’s ambition to triple global story transactions within three years.
Kakao Entertainment has been cultivating South Korea’s webtoon and web novel industry with an eye on the global market since 2002 when it started with the first webtoon service in the country.
Write to Chae-Yeon Kim at
why29@hankyung.comJongwoo Cheon edited this article.
