Dissecting Comico Korea
The first cut is the deepest.
Last week, there was news that Comico was considering closing their French operations of Pocket Comics (Maeil Economy) which would’ve left their Korean, North American and native Japanese services in tact.
We learned the full extent of their closures today as NHN Comico announced they will be closing their French, North American, and Korean platforms in 2025 (MoneyS).
All three platforms will continue operating until July 15th when all comics will stop publishing and Coins will no longer be available for purchase. Any remaining Coins can be refunded while the service itself will be up until mid-October of 2025.
The closure of their webtoon services in France was somewhat expected as it looks like Naver is going to be the only mainstream Korean publisher to survive the current market flux. And the closure of their North American platform can be chalked up to competition and the economic realities of operating in a saturated market. Of the “2nd gen” North American platforms operating out of Korea, this leaves only Manta Comics to compete with WEBTOON, Tapas, Tappytoon and Lezhin.
But Korea has a matured webtoon market with an audience base that is chomping at the bit for content.
So, why is the Korean platform closing?
The New Isn’t “New”
One of the first things I do when I look at a webtoon platform is look at the numbers. I spent one year overseeing US platform operations at Lezhin, but about three years analyzing data from promotions, new launches, to regular everyday sales for Korea and North America.
Based on my experience, I lean towards inspecting the new launches on any given webtoon platform.
And, hoo-boy… I was not expecting this.
Above is a screenshot of Comico Korea’s new launches from May 21st to May 31st. Just off the bat, 10 launches over the course of 10 days seems like a lot for overseas platforms, but it’s low for Korea. It hints at either a lack of inbound licensing or slow in-house production.
But even a cursory glance tells me that many of the titles being licensed and launched on Comico Korea were older titles. The first title and the fifth, marked with orange “완결” launched as completed titles. This means they were published elsewhere and licensed to Comico after the initial run completed. Aside from those two, I recognize one or two older titles including a classic Daewon title from before my time.
In theory, “newness” isn’t a requirement for a title to perform well. It helps and can be a determining factor, but plenty of non-exclusive titles earn a decent amount of revenue when they hit a new platform.
Spoiler alert: that isn’t the case here.
Numbers Don’t Lie
Under the titles is a “eye” icon followed by a number. These are the view counts for each title and while some aren’t visible, others are easily readable.
The latest launch, “이 용사 실화냐”, launched on May 29th with 3 episodes free and 98 paid episodes. It’s a non-exclusive relaunch of an older webtoon originally launched in 2022 on Kakao Page with over 6 million views there. At the time of writing, it has 260 views after 2 weeks on the platform.
The next title is the Korean translation of “My Husband and I Cannot Live in the Same World”, a webtoon produced by Tappytoon Studio, based on a Korean webnovel and first published in English. It launched in Korea on May 28th on Comico, Mr. Blue, and Naver Webtoon (Korea). With 3 free episodes and 32 paid episodes, it has 2,866 views after 19 days on the platform.
The rest of the new launches don’t fair much better with up to 4 weeks on the platform and only have views in the 200 - 2000 range.
These numbers, taken alone, aren’t themselves a sign of poor performance. Korean platforms are littered with relaunches that are there to take up space, not bring in revenue. Relaunches are often contracted in bulk without much expectation of having a strong return.
But taken as a whole, they hint a much bigger problem that’s amplified by the lack one important factor: popular new releases.
Webtoon popularity is based on a number of factors, few of which are predictable or controllable by the publisher. But having a total lack of new titles hitting the one million or 100 thousand view count range is a major problem.
A Lightweight Roster
Personally, I can’t remember the last time someone recommended a Comico webtoon for me to read. And when I took the logic I applied to new launches and applied it to the Rankings tab, I realized why.
There are plenty of popular titles here… from 2022. Only one of their top 10 titles is from 2024 with none from 2025. And while the top 10 titles each have more than 1 million views, that isn’t true for titles in the top 20.
These numbers, as well as others from the catalogue, make the platform feel bereft of tentpole titles. There isn’t a “Solo Leveling” or a “Remarried Empress” tier title in the cataloge, much less 10 or 20 of them like other platforms have. And the Korean market is far too matured for audiences not to have noticed that.
The problem isn’t all that different from Bufftoon or Peanutoon. When compared against the likes of KakaoPage or Naver Webtoon in Korea, the Comico platform is nearly empty. While there’s quality here, there’s not nearly enough to lure in readers from other platforms.
Comico doesn’t have the adult or BL content of Toptoon or Lezhin. Nor do they have wide-reaching libraries like RIDI or Naver. And while there’s some good romance-fantasy here, it doesn’t match the numbers of Naver or Kakao.
And based on the numbers, it looks like audiences knew it.