How Webtoons Are Changing Movies and TV | Hyeonmi Kim | TED

Transcriber: Leslie Gauthier

Believe it or not,

many of you are participating

in one of the greatest democratizations of storytelling

the world has ever known.

And you’re probably doing this on a daily basis

through the movies and TV shows you’re watching.

This is a grand democratization that’s giving voice on a global scale

to the bizarre, fantastical stories of the unheard.

It’s amazing,

and I want to tell you all about it.

But first, to fully appreciate everything I'm about to say,

you need to understand how movies and TV shows are traditionally made.

So for the longest time,

the mainstream media industry has relied on a closed ecosystem of script writers.

These star script writers are often chosen to create a series of blockbusters.

And the production house investors rely on these proven writers

to increase their chances of success.

And you can see the problem here.

A closed network of writers naturally limits the boundaries of plots.

This is why sometimes you feel like you’re watching the same superhero plots

and cliché love stories.

But this is all changing.

And it’s changing fast because of webtoons.

A webtoon is basically a story that’s told using cartoon, comic-like illustrations.

It’s published in short segments,

usually on a weekly basis

and meant to be read on a smartphone in five, 10 minutes.

It’s sure to create fun, bite-sized entertainment,

but it's not like Instagram or TikTok.

Those are considered as non-storytelling media,

whereas webtoons are storytelling media.

They are meant to follow a narrative structure.

Webtoons are published in these open platforms where anybody --

you, me, a single mother in Pakistan,

a teenager in Japan,

anyone --

anyone can share our great stories

to find an audience who are excited to consume our content.

The whole phenomenon has started in Korea

and now spread around the world.

For example, in the United States,

one of the major webtoon platforms,

called Naver Webtoon,

has now exceeded 15 million monthly users.

This is not something happening in the quiet corner of the internet.

In fact, thanks to the healthy growth of audience,

the web story platform market itself now reaches almost one billion US dollars

and counting.

So I’m a strategy consultant,

and I work with a lot of media companies and content providers.

And I realize that the companies

and executives I work with fall into two buckets.

Those who start to realize the webtoon universe is a treasure trove

of new and fabulous stories just waiting to be made into movies or TV series.

And those whom I am trying to really wake up

so that they can fully capitalize on this phenomenon as well.

So if you asked me to describe what a webtoon really is,

I would say it’s a multimillion-dollar megaphone for you

and people like you.

With the eyes of forward-thinking content producers

who are turning to webtoons,

it’s easier than ever for the writer in you

to become a blockbuster storyteller.

Are you a “Hellbound” fan?

What about “Itaewon Class” or “Kingdom”?

They all started as webtoons.

Actually, in 2021 alone,

there were more than two dozen TV series made based on webtoons,

aired across major TV channels and streaming media with big-time success.

For example, Netflix’s “Hellbound” is a story about people

who find out when they’re going to die

and if they're going to heaven or hell.

And there is an amazing plot twist

to keep you guessing who’s getting into heaven,

and who’s, you know, hellbound.

“Hellbound” was originally rolled out as a webtoon in 2019 and 2020.

Then Netflix picked it up,

and when it aired last year in November,

it hit the top 10 most-watched list.

(Video) (Korean) Do you really think justice can be served

through man-made law?

(Sound effects)

Hyeonmi Kim: Netflix also made “D.P.”

It’s a story based on the writer’s real-life experience

in Korean military police.

And, you know, if any one of you are really wondering

whether ordinary people can make it big in the webtoon universe,

you would be happy to hear that the writer of “D.P” used to publish his webtoon

under Ordinary Kim.

The webtoon writers can make up to 150,000 US dollars in Korea a year,

which is five times higher than the average income.

This is usually based on the revenue

split between the writers and the webtoon platforms.

And for those major ones such as Ordinary Kim,

who make a serial hit webtoons

and crossover content creation such as movies and dramas,

I mean, they can make, you know, 10 times higher income or even more.

You know what else I really love

about the fact that the media industry is pulling stories from webtoons?

So many people win

because this new model is interactive.

Web story authors get real-time feedback from the audience who reads each episode.

So the writers get better faster,

and the media companies don’t have to wait until after the show is made

to see how it goes.

This new model also helps

with the media industry’s notorious problem with diversity.

Anyone can be a writer in a web story platform,

from a fresh grad cartoonist to a housewife,

to who, you know, who dreamed of being a novelist one day.

The writers are diverse and creative,

and so are their stories.

One of the popular webtoons called “True Beauty”

was written by an amateur cartoonist.

It was her first webtoon

and became a big hit that found fans in close to 100 countries.

Then it was made into TV drama that aired all across Asia.

It’s a story about a high school girl who has quite different looks

with and without makeup.

Then the story shows how she became, you know,

comfortable with herself and loved as she is.

At the beginning, people didn’t know who the writer was.

As the show became more and more popular,

the writer got a spotlight,

and it was more surprising that she looked very alike to the main character.

And she’s a single mom.

Now, not only has her webtoon and drama become a big hit,

she’s creating a positive influence

by making single-parent society much more public than before in Korea.

Where to from here?

I personally believe in a few scenarios of evolution.

For the webtoon industry,

there will be more and more specialized drawing houses,

which could help with designs and drawing

so that more writers could provide great stories

without having to be great artists.

For streaming networks,

they will continue to keep an eye on unique stories starting from webtoons

to web novel,

to classic novel --

even mythology.

Who knows?

Maybe the next big-hit drama could even originate from an old goddess story

in an island in Indonesia.

The competition to hunt the best story in the world is on.

Thank you.

(Applause and cheers)