Junkoo Kim wanted something to read. He built WEBTOON.

Junkoo Kim had the sort of problem that seems unlikely to require a stock exchange. He wanted more comics to read. South Korea’s comics market was struggling, and the supply of new work disappointed him. Most readers in that situation find another hobby. Kim helped build a publishing platform, then spent the next two decades making it harder to run out of stories.

His devotion had a substantial paper trail. He once described having kept about 8,000 comic books at home. He and friends had divided up the buying, purchasing different stretches of a series and keeping the books together. It was an informal distribution arrangement, with his house doing the work of a warehouse. Long before WEBTOON, he understood that one reader’s budget could go further with a little cooperation.

The adult biography took a less obvious route. Kim earned a bachelor’s degree in applied chemistry at Seoul National University and joined NAVER as a developer in 2004. An engineering education, a job at an internet company and an appetite for comics made an unusual combination. The company that would eventually trade in New York began with those ingredients in Korea.

WEBTOON dates its beginning to 2005. Kim’s account of the decision is refreshingly practical: with publishers producing too little new material, encouraging individual creators could bring more varied work to readers. He was addressing a shortage he felt personally. A platform could invite people into publishing who had not yet found a publisher, and give an impatient reader more reasons to return.

A small movement of the thumb

A printed comic arrives with its own instructions. The page determines where the eye goes, where a scene ends and what can be concealed until the next turn. Moving that page onto a screen preserves the object, but it can also preserve its inconveniences. A reader holding a phone has a smaller window and a perfectly serviceable thumb.

Kim’s approach to scrolling grew out of an observation about ordinary computer use. People already moved down web pages to read. The early context was the desktop computer, before the phone became the obvious home for this habit. The format followed a gesture readers understood. A comic could unfold along that movement instead of repeatedly asking the reader to negotiate a page.

The result has an appealingly literal quality. Keep going down and the story continues. A pause between images can create suspense; a long image can occupy more space than a conventional panel. Vertical scrolling gives artists another way to arrange timing. It also makes it easy to begin reading without first learning how the interface wants to be handled.

Kim also paid attention to when readers came back. Regular episode schedules gave the service a rhythm. Anticipation could become part of the product: the next installment belonged to a particular day. Anyone who has waited for a favorite serial knows how quickly a modest appointment can acquire the importance of a diplomatic summit. The schedule respects that attachment.

Leave the door open

A publishing service needs a continuing supply of people willing to publish. WEBTOON’s answer included an open submission route, known in its early international years as Challenge League. Aspiring artists could upload work, gather readers and potentially move into paid partnerships. That route made discovery part of the service’s everyday activity, alongside the established series.

The international launch came in 2014 under the LINE Webtoon name. Expansion meant translating stories and finding artists who could speak to readers in their own markets. A platform built around individual authors had to accommodate different senses of humor, different visual traditions and different expectations about what a comic might contain. A single house taste would have been an awkward passport.

Kim’s enthusiasm for variety has remained explicit. He has argued that individual creators bring both quality and a range of material. Romance, fantasy, comedy and horror can coexist because the audience does not arrive with one shared appetite. The practical attraction is easy to grasp: a reader who dislikes one story may still find another worth opening.

The distinction between discovering a talent and sustaining a career matters here. Visibility can be exciting and brief. Making a living requires money to reach the person doing the work. WEBTOON reported paying creators $2.8 billion between 2017 and 2023. That aggregate describes the scale of its creator economy; it does not tell us what any particular artist earned, or make every creative career predictable.

For Kim, the business depends on artists continuing to have reasons to use it. The service can offer a place to start, an audience to reach and opportunities beyond an initial series. Each is useful at a different moment. A first upload and a screen adaptation may sit on the same corporate diagram, but they represent very different mornings at a creator’s desk.

The stories leave the screen

The screen in question was initially the one in the reader’s hand. Over time, WEBTOON’s business extended toward television, film, books and other adaptations. Sweet Home and Tower of God show two of the routes: live action and animation. A comic’s characters can travel, even when the original reading experience stays firmly attached to a vertical scroll.

That creates another job for a founder who began as a fan. A story that works in one medium has to survive the move to another. Reading and watching distribute time differently. A reader can linger, skip back or race ahead; a filmed scene proceeds at the speed its makers choose. A recognizable title is only the beginning of the work.

Kim has stressed the importance of finding partners who can adapt a property well. The concern fits the business as much as the fandom. An existing audience has expectations, and a new audience needs a reason to care. Licensing a name may open a conversation, but the resulting film or series still has to earn the time spent watching it.

His ambition has grown with that network of possibilities. In 2024, he described wanting creators to choose WEBTOON first for their storytelling, and entertainment companies to look there for material to adapt. It is a revealing pair of wishes. One concerns the person beginning a story; the other concerns the company searching for its next production. His platform has to be useful to both.

“Everyone in the world has their own stories; it all started from that belief.”Junkoo Kim, 2024

Confetti is the easy part

On June 27, 2024, WEBTOON Entertainment began trading on Nasdaq as WBTN. The offering sold 15 million shares at $21 apiece, raising $315 million in gross proceeds. The day’s photographs feature the expected confetti and raised hands. Somewhere in that very public celebration sits the earlier, very private complaint: there ought to be more good comics to read.

An IPO changes the company’s audience. Alongside readers and creators are investors who want to understand growth, costs and execution. A serialized story can leave an ending unresolved for another week. A public company has a calendar of its own, and the questions tend to arrive on schedule. Kim’s job now includes explaining how the creative activity supports a durable business.

The recognition followed. Bloomberg Businessweek included him in its 2024 Screentime Ones to Watch selection. In 2025, Gold House named Kim and fellow WEBTOON executive David Lee to its A100 list. The Los Angeles Business Journal included Kim in its LA500 again in 2026. These honors chart the widening circles around him: technology, entertainment and the city where his American business operates.

His local preferences are less grand than those categories suggest. He has named The Little Prince as a favorite book and BCD Tofu House on Wilshire as a restaurant he enjoys. His grandfather’s advice, which he offered as a favorite quotation, was to keep a sense of humor during difficult times. For someone managing a company built on cliffhangers, that seems a useful family inheritance.

A new chapter, with familiar characters

Disney became a particularly consequential connection. In January 2026, Disney and WEBTOON announced completion of strategic agreements that included Disney’s approximately 2 percent equity investment. The companies also set out plans for WEBTOON to build and operate a digital comics platform containing material from Disney’s portfolio, including Marvel and Star Wars, alongside selected WEBTOON Originals.

The arrangement puts established characters beside the business Kim built to discover new stories. Both carry an audience, but they arrive with different histories. An artist making a first upload is asking to be noticed. A familiar franchise arrives already recognized. Serving both requires attention to discovery as well as familiarity, so that a large catalog remains somewhere readers can actually find things.

Kim also changed how the company is run. In March 2026, Yongsoo Kim became president, taking responsibility for global operations and execution while Junkoo Kim concentrated on long-term strategy and vision. Explaining the choice, the founder said that he valued a colleague who shared his goals while thinking differently about how to reach them. Agreement on the destination could leave plenty of room for argument about the route.

A September 30 board decision approved arrangements connected with his relocation of his primary residence from Korea to the United States. He would continue as CEO and chairman. For a business that had already crossed borders, its founder was making another crossing himself. The next phase would place him closer to the American operation.

The scale has changed since the days of sharing comic purchases with friends. The underlying pleasure remains easy to recognize: finding something worth reading, then wanting someone else to read it too. Kim has built a career around making that exchange happen more often. After the listing, the partnerships and the organizational charts, the invitation is still small enough to fit on a phone. There is another story. Keep scrolling.