Webtoon (platform)

Webtoon (stylized in all caps) is a South Korean-American webtoon platform launched in 2004 by Naver Corporation, providing hosting for webtoons and compact digital comics. The platform, controlled by Naver and the Naver-SoftBank Group joint venture LY Corporation through a Delaware-domiciled, Los Angeles, California-headquartered holding company Webtoon Entertainment Inc., is free and can be found both on the web at Webtoons.com and on mobile devices available for both Android and iOS.

The platform first launched in South Korea as Naver Webtoon and then globally as Line Webtoon in July 2014, as the Naver brand is not well known outside of South Korea, and some of its services are also not available outside of the country. The service gained a large amount of traction during the late 2000s and early 2010s. In 2016, Naver's webtoon service entered the Japanese market as XOY and the Chinese market as Dongman Manhua (咚漫漫画). On December 18, 2018, Naver closed XOY and migrated all of its translated and original webtoons to Line Manga, its manga service that offers licensed manga. In 2019, Line Webtoon was changed to Webtoon in English; Spanish and French versions were launched.

The platform partners with creators to publish original content under the Webtoon Originals banner and hosts a number of other series on its self-publishing site, Canvas. Line Webtoon comics can be discovered through the "daily system" function, along with being read and downloaded for free on computers and both Android and iOS devices. In November 2020, Webtoon established a new subsidiary called Webtoon Studios for the purpose of licensing English-language properties. In August 2022, it was reported that Wattpad Webtoon Studios would expand with a new animation division.