Webtoon to bring Disney titles to mobile platform
Webtoon Entertainment, the US-based parent company of Naver Webtoon, struck a multiyear partnership with Walt Disney Co. to bring around 100 titles from Marvel, "Star Wars" and other Disney properties to its vertical-scrolling platform, the companies announced Wednesday.
The partnership will release adaptations of existing comics for smartphone viewing as well as original content developed for the mobile format. The content will appear in a dedicated section of Webtoon's English-language app, Webtoon said.
"Amazing Spider-Man" debuts this month, followed by "Avengers," "Star Wars" and other titles. Users can read initial episodes for free before purchasing additional chapters with in-app coins.
The deal helps fill a major content gap for the Naver Corp.-backed company as it expands beyond Asian markets. The platform boasts 155 million monthly active users globally, but has lacked superhero titles — which Disney's Marvel catalog will now deliver in earnest. The platform's demographics skew younger and more female than traditional comics readers, and its popular titles lean toward fantasy, romance and slice-of-life genres.
For Disney, the partnership marks a shift from Marvel Comics' traditional distribution through comic shops and download services that cater to older fans. The entertainment giant could tap into Webtoon's younger, mobile-first user base while opening new revenue streams for its extensive back catalog.
"The Disney, Marvel, 20th Century and Star Wars brands are among the most legendary, creative and successful in the industry," said Yongsoo Kim, Webtoon's chief strategy officer. "We're bringing this legendary storytelling to a new generation of mobile-native comic fans."
The announcement sent Webtoon shares up 28 percent in after-hours trading Tuesday, coinciding with second-quarter earnings announced the same day. Webtoon reported revenue rose 8.5 percent to $348.3 million, while net losses narrowed to $3.9 million from $76.6 million a year earlier. The company projects third-quarter revenue between $380 million and $390 million.
Webtoon Entertainment went public on Nasdaq in June 2024. The US-listed company serves as the parent of Korea's Naver Webtoon following a May 2020 restructuring, with Naver Corp. maintaining majority control. The company reported 2024 revenue of $1.35 billion with a net loss of $152.9 million.
Financial details of the partnership were not disclosed, but Disney's Daniel Fink, head of digital innovation, called it "one of the biggest" publishing partnerships his company has undertaken.
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Korea Herald
8 hours ago
- Korea Herald
Nowhere to turn but toward future: Seoul and Tokyo 80 years after liberation
Calls grow for fresh Korea-Japan declaration to tackle shared challenges absent from 1998 agreement Eighty years after the end of Japan's 35-year colonial rule, South Korea and Japan remain locked in an uneasy duet — pulled together by the inescapable demands of geopolitics, yet held apart by the deep, unhealed wounds left by Japan's occupation of the Korean Peninsula. As Korea marks its 80th National Liberation Day on Friday, the question has never felt more urgent. Can Seoul and Tokyo — tethered by geography and facing many shared challenges — forge a genuinely future-oriented partnership despite historical disputes so deeply ingrained that they have outlived generations? The stakes are raised by the rapidly shifting global order under US President Donald Trump's 'America First' foreign policy. Washington is recalibrating its alliances with both South Korea and Japan, pivoting toward the China threat in the Indo-Pacific region. As the region's strategic map is redrawn, Seoul and Tokyo are left with fewer and fewer exits from each other's orbit. 'Future-oriented relations are not about people-to-people exchanges or building mutual trust. Rather, they require a fundamental discussion of how Korea and Japan must inevitably cooperate to survive in a profoundly transformed global environment,' Yang Kee-ho, professor of Japanese studies at Sungkonghoe University, told The Korea Herald. 'This is the moment when Korea and Japan must envision a new phase of cooperation.' The list of pressures is long: the intensifying US-China strategic competition, Trump's go-it-alone diplomacy, and for Seoul, the challenge of navigating Washington's push to 'modernize' the alliance and grant greater strategic flexibility to US Forces Korea. Add to that North Korea's advancing nuclear and missile programs, and Beijing's ambitions — from dominating global high-tech manufacturing through its 'Made in China 2025' initiative to becoming a 'fully developed, rich, and powerful' nation by 2049. 'Such developments carry a considerable risk of disrupting the status quo in Northeast Asia, which is why it is necessary to build sufficient, shared deterrence through joint discussions,' said Yang, highlighting the need for coordination between Seoul and Tokyo. South Korea and Japan have cogent reasons to work in tandem for better outcomes for both countries in the face of parallel challenges, including 'mounting Trump-origin risks' such as tariff negotiations with the US, said Choi Eun-mi, a research fellow at the Center for Regional Studies at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. 'The merits of Korea-Japan cooperation, in my view, are very significant in that regard,' Choi said. 'At present, cooperation between Korea and Japan has become nothing short of indispensable, both domestically and internationally.' Symbolically, President Lee Jae Myung is set to visit Tokyo from Aug. 23 to 24 for a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba before heading to Washington for his first in-person meeting with Trump. Foreign Minister Cho Hyun also opted for Tokyo for his first overseas trip before flying to Washington. Korea-Japan cooperation is also imperative, given the breadth of shared future-oriented challenges. 'Between Korea and Japan, there are numerous common challenges,' Lim Eun-jung, professor in the Division of International Studies at Kongju National University, told The Korea Herald. 'Population decline, a super-aged society, labor shortages, regional extinction, industrial transformation, cybersecurity, the utilization of AI and the proliferation of humanoid robots, and energy security are all areas that show the structural similarities of the two countries.' Closer, yet still divided Even as pressing shared challenges bring Seoul and Tokyo closer, major obstacles, including potential discrepancies in their foreign policy approaches to China and North Korea, still stand. 'In dealing with North Korea, South Korea favors dialogue, while Japan has traditionally prioritized sanctions over engagement,' said Lee Ki-tae, director of the Center for Diplomatic Strategy at the Sejong Institute, discussing the Lee Jae Myung administration's inter-Korean policy. 'That said, the Ishiba administration appears to place somewhat greater weight on dialogue, aligning its stance more closely with ours and reducing the potential for friction.' Lee, however, noted, 'On China policy, Japan remains firmly in step with the US, whereas South Korea prefers not to be drawn into (the US-China competition) — a subtle divergence in perception.' Historical disputes, which are ingrained in the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations that formally normalized diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan, remain intact as a major obstacle. Despite the general positive assessment of the Lee administration's Japan policy in its early stages, experts point out that the current tendency of both the Lee and Ishiba administrations to leave historical disputes off the agenda also poses a significant hurdle. 'The overall start has been good. Given how difficult things are right now for both Korea and Japan, avoiding conflict is important, so the direction itself has been well set,' Yang said. 'However, the current situation is a disguised peace or a postponed conflict.' Yang pointed out that the Lee administration's 'pragmatic diplomacy' cannot replace a guiding principle for historical disputes, urging Seoul to go beyond pragmatism by establishing clear rules for dealing with and managing these issues with Japan. Without such principles in place, Yang warned, Seoul and Tokyo risk letting conflicts accumulate. In that scenario, the ruling Democratic Party of Korea could be tempted to bash Japan to boost support for the party or President Lee, repeating a familiar vicious cycle. History still under the surface Echoing those concerns, Choi underscored that Seoul and Tokyo 'need to discuss how they will live with and manage historical issues, given that they are difficult to resolve, impossible to simply erase, and, in truth, extremely hard to settle completely.' 'Yet that discussion is entirely absent, which is regrettable. It's not that we've solved this issue and therefore no longer talk about it — it clearly remains beneath the surface, but it's just not showing right now,' Choi explained. 'Japan doesn't want to bring it up, and Korea isn't talking about it either, which means the issue could resurface at any time. I'm not sure if I should call it a 'risk,' but I would describe it as one factor that makes cooperation more difficult.' Lee Ki-tae pointed out that sustainable ties require political will. 'It is most important for the leadership in both countries to demonstrate the will not to exploit negative public sentiment toward each other for domestic political purposes,' he said. Lee also underlined the significance of Seoul and Tokyo in forging public discourse on the indispensability of bilateral cooperation. 'Beyond that, the leadership must recognize that Korea-Japan cooperation is, in a sense, essential for the survival of both countries, and they should communicate this effectively to their citizens,' Lee added. 'It is also important to explain clearly to the public that cooperation between Korea and Japan contributes to addressing issues on the Korean Peninsula, as well as to peace and stability in the broader Northeast Asian region.' In particular, Seoul and Tokyo should avoid repeating the past mistake of allowing historical disputes to spill over and hamper economic and security cooperation, as happened during the overlapping period of the Moon Jae-in administration and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's second term. 'I'd like to single out the Moon-Abe period as an important turning point because, no matter how much Korea-Japan relations were tied up in historical issues, there had always been certain lines neither side would cross,' Lim said, when asked about the most important turning point in bilateral relations over the 80 years since liberation and its significance. 'During the Moon and Abe administrations, however, those lines collapsed, sending the relationship into a downward spiral.' Tensions peaked in 2019 when South Korea's Supreme Court ordered Japanese companies to compensate the Korean victims of wartime forced labor. In response, the Abe administration restricted exports of three key semiconductor materials in July and removed South Korea from its list of preferred trading partners the following month. These actions led to a nationwide boycott in South Korea of Japanese goods and travel to Japan. That November, the Moon administration conditionally delayed its decision to end the GSOMIA military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan, effectively suspending its operation, while a radar lock-on dispute the following month further strained defense cooperation and exchanges between the two countries. This period also saw growing economic security concerns, driven by the first Trump administration's 'America First' policies and supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic. 'Yet, paradoxically, this period also made us realize anew that Korea and Japan are bound together — economically, socially and culturally — in ways that are profoundly close,' Lim said. 'Never again should historical issues be allowed to damage cooperation not only in the economic sphere, but also in the realm of security.' Time for a new joint declaration For many in Seoul, the benchmark for a diplomatic reset remains the 1998 Kim Dae-jung-Obuchi Declaration, formally titled the Korea-Japan Joint Declaration: A New Partnership Toward the Twenty-first Century. In the declaration, Seoul and Tokyo set out a roadmap for future-oriented cooperation, including principles for collaboration across sectors such as security, the economy, policy, people-to-people and cultural exchanges and global issues. It also included Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi's expression of 'deep remorse and heartfelt apology' for Korea's colonization. The time has come to forge a new joint declaration. 'The international situation in 1998, when it was created, is completely different from what it is now, so we need a vision for Korea-Japan cooperation that reflects the current circumstances,' she said. 'Among the action plans for 43 items included (in the declaration), there are some that were relevant then and still are today, but there are also topics that are no longer timely. So, we need an updated version that addresses how to deal with those aspects.' Choi cites the 'Trump risk' as a clear example. 'It's not just because of the Trump administration, but because the international environment has become very unstable,' Choi said. 'For instance, if US involvement is reduced, how will regional security be maintained? We need to discuss how Korea and Japan can cooperate in that context.' Choi noted that a forward-looking approach should extend beyond economic and historical matters that were absent or only lightly addressed in the 1998 declaration. For instance, the 1998 declaration did not mention supply chains, AI or 5G, which are now central to both bilateral and global agendas. The joint declaration also left out specific historical topics, like the memorial service at the Sado gold mine, where Koreans were subjected to forced labor during World War II. Choi underscored that these issues should be included in a new framework, along with plans for handling future challenges. Lee concurred on the need to forge a new joint declaration in light of the shift in the balance between Seoul and Tokyo since then. 'At that time, in 1998, we were still — I wouldn't say far behind Japan, but in a somewhat lower position — and that perspective was reflected in much of the content,' Lee said. 'If that declaration was made in the context of Japan helping Korea, today the two countries are truly on an equal footing. In this context, we need a new version of the Korea-Japan Partnership Declaration that considers how the two countries, as equals, should cooperate.' Seizing the Ishiba opportunity Nam Ki-jeong, professor at the Institute for Japanese Studies at Seoul National University, views the current Ishiba administration in Tokyo as part of a rare alignment of circumstances that could offer the Lee administration a valuable opening. 'The Ishiba Cabinet has the potential to last a bit longer,' he said. 'While it's possible that it could end in a very short period, if we carefully devise and execute a strategy in coordination with the Ishiba Cabinet and those around it, we can advance Korea-Japan relations during the time that the Cabinet is in place.' Even if the political situation changes, Nam argues, the groundwork laid now could bring long-term benefits. If the ruling Liberal Democratic Party were to shift further to the right after the Ishiba Cabinet, for example, under figures like former economic security minister Sanae Takaichi, the existing groundwork could help keep a more hardline government in check. On the other hand, if the LDP were to hold longer to the relatively liberal approach established by Ishiba, Seoul and Tokyo could have a better chance of improving their relationship beyond its current state. 'Right now, Korea-Japan relations enjoy an exceptionally favorable combination of administrations. When such a combination emerges, we must think on our side about how to make the most of the opportunity,' Nam said. 'Producing tangible results while Ishiba is in office is crucial at this moment.'
Korea Herald
9 hours ago
- Korea Herald
Korean tycoons to join Lee for Trump summit
South Korea's top conglomerate leaders will join President Lee Jae Myung on a US visit next week for his summit with US President Donald Trump, aiming to promote major investments in strategic sectors including semiconductors, batteries, automobiles and shipbuilding, according to industry sources Thursday. The Aug. 24-26 trip will feature four chaebol heads — Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Chung Euisun and LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo — along with executives from leading shipbuilding, aviation and defense firms. The delegation will be tightly focused on the Aug. 25 White House summit, with the government assembling a compact, high-impact team capable of announcing significant US investments. Samsung is operating and building foundry plants worth $37 billion in Austin and Taylor, Texas, while SK hynix is investing $3.87 billion in an advanced packaging plant for its cutting-edge high bandwidth memory chips in Indiana. Hyundai's Chung met Trump in March, pledging $21 billion in new US projects, including a steel plant. LG Energy Solution is also investing about 30 trillion won ($21.7 billion) across the US, including a 7-trillion-won facility in Arizona. The four chaebol groups are expected to discuss semiconductor expansion and AI chip partnerships, as well as electric vehicle and battery production growth, and Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, during the visit. Hanwha Group Vice Chairman Kim Dong-kwan and HD Hyundai Senior Vice Chairman Chung Ki-sun, who are part of the delegation, are also expected to announce new deals as their companies are both central to the Korea-US shipbuilding cooperation initiative known as the MASGA project. Hanwha acquired Philly Shipyard last year, while HD Hyundai secured a US Navy maintenance contract. Korean Air Chairman Cho Won-tae, traveling with the delegation, recently signed $32.7 billion in supply agreements with Boeing and GE Aerospace. Ahead of the departure, the president will meet the delegation to review each company's investment pledges, tailoring the 'Korea Sales' campaign to appeal to Trump's preference for favorable reciprocal deals, sources say. "The summit agenda is expected to cover economic cooperation in manufacturing, advanced technology and key minerals, with an aim to further strengthen the bilateral economic security partnership," Presidential spokesperson Kang Yu-jung said.
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Korea Herald
9 hours ago
- Korea Herald
[Inside K-AI] How benchmarks shape AI battlefield -- and where Korea's models stand
Standardized tests offer reality check, separating marketing buzz from genuine AI performance The race for sovereign AI is intensifying, with countries rushing to build their own large language models to secure technological independence. Korea is no exception -- the government has tapped five leading companies to spearhead the creation of homegrown models tailored to national priorities. In this high-stakes contest, The Korea Herald launches a special series exploring Korea's AI industry and its standing in the global arena, and the rise of Korean-language-focused systems. This first installment looks at benchmarks -- the scorecards of the AI world -- and how Korean models measure up on the tests that are shaping the race. – Ed. AI has swept across the tech industry, powering chatbots, search engines and productivity tools. OpenAI's ChatGPT -- which first ignited the global buzz in November 2022 -- and other big tech models sit firmly in the top tier, but the surge of large language models shows no sign of slowing. Each new arrival is touted as the smartest or the first of its kind, outscoring the rest. That raises a key question: how are these models really evaluated, and which is the true leader? The answer lies in benchmarks -- the standardized tests that have become the AI world's scoreboard, where companies race to climb the rankings and prove their worth. In July, South Korea's Upstage pulled off an unexpected breakthrough when its 31-billion-parameter Solar Pro 2 became the only Korean model listed as a "frontier model" by UK-based benchmarking platform Artificial Analysis. It ranked just outside the global top 10 for intelligence and placed first in Intelligence vs. Cost to Run, a measure of how much capability a model delivers for its operating cost. The result prompted swift reaction from Elon Musk, whose AI company xAI is also a relative newcomer battling entrenched leaders. In a post on X, he insisted his Grok 4 model "remains No. 1" and is "rapidly improving" -- a pointed defense that reflects how sensitive and strategic leaderboard positions have become in the global AI race. Launching its latest GPT-5 model last week, OpenAI also promoted the model as "much smarter" than earlier ones and cited scores in several key benchmarks measuring performance in areas such as math, coding and visual perception. "For engineers, benchmarks serve as a barometer for how the LLM they developed fares in the global competition, and as a compass for its future development," an official of an LLM startup said. Constant race to set new records Much like human IQ tests or university entrance exams, the benchmarks offer a structured way to measure various capabilities, from language comprehension and reasoning to code generation, under the same conditions. When an LLM tops a benchmark, it is deemed State-of-the-Art (SOTA) for that task -- a title that can quickly change as new models are released. MMLU, which is one of the most widely used benchmarks, poses more than 15,000 multiple-choice questions across 57 subjects. HumanEval and LiveCodeBench test coding ability, while AIME and MATH-500 gauge mathematical reasoning. For instance, OpenAI boasted that its new GPT-5 achieved SOTA in math, scoring 94.6 percent on AIME 2025 without tools; in real-world coding, scoring 74.9 percent on SWE-bench Verified; and in multimodal understanding, achieving 84.2 percent on MMMU, among others. Korean LLM firms are also working fiercely to set new records. Releasing its most up-to-date model Exaone 4.0 on July 15, LG AI Research promoted its strong performance in advanced benchmarks. In MMLU-Pro, the 32-billion-parameter model scored 81.8 percent, ahead of Microsoft's Phi 4 reasoning-plus with 76 percent and Mistral's Magistral Small-2506 at 73.4 percent. In AIME 2025, it also outperformed those rivals with a score of 85.3 percent. As LLMs advance rapidly, the benchmarks themselves are also evolving. MMLU now offers a Pro edition with more complex reasoning questions. In January, a coalition of 1,000 experts launched Humanity's Last Exam -- a 2,500-question test spanning classical literature to quantum chemistry. But what often confuses the public is the endless list of scores. Experts note that because LLMs can do so many different things, each has its own strengths -- making it difficult to declare one model "the best" based on a single benchmark. To make sense of the growing number of benchmark results, platforms like Hugging Face provide leaderboards that compile scores from multiple tests and rank models accordingly. The Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index is another prominent one that aggregates results from eight advanced benchmarks -- including the MMLU-Pro, Humanity's Last Exam and AIME -- to produce an overall score. With strong scores across multiple benchmarks, LG's Exaone and Upstage's Solar Pro 2 were the only Korean LLMs to make the Artificial Analysis index in July. At the time of release, Exaone 4.0 ranked 11th globally in the Intelligence Index, standing shoulder to shoulder with big brands such as Google's Gemini, OpenAI's ChatGPT and Alibaba's Qwen. Upstage's Solar Pro 2 went a step further, becoming the only Korean model recognized in the leaderboard's Frontier Language Model Intelligence category -- reserved for the highest-performing systems at the cutting edge of research and development. It also topped the Intelligence vs. Cost to Run metric. 'It is fair to say Korean models are quite competitive, considering their rivals are often several times larger," an LG official said, explaining how models like Grok 4, which held the top spot in the July index, has a staggering 1.7 trillion parameters -- meaning it used far more resources in training to achieve the intelligence score. The list has since updated its benchmarks with more challenging tests and added newly released models such as GPT-5 -- which overtook Grok 4 for the top spot -- nudging the Korean models down slightly, though both remain in the global index. LG AI Research and Upstage have both been named among the government's five consortia tasked with leading the development of South Korea's proprietary AI foundation models, alongside Naver Cloud, SK Telecom and NC AI. Naver, which became the third company in the world to develop a hyperscale AI model with HyperClova in 2021, has since upgraded its foundation model and in June released HyperClova X Think. The company cites its model's strength in its deep understanding of the Korean language. Going beyond benchmarks The way benchmarks gain recognition is similar to how a new measurement scale in the social sciences becomes a standard. After being published in a peer-reviewed paper, it should be validated at a reputable academic conference and adopted by the global AI community, an industry official explained. As crowded as the AI field is becoming, with one LLM after another touting new benchmark scores, the results still serve an important purpose: they offer guidelines for engineers in measuring their progress. "Global big techs still lead, but players in countries like China, France and Korea are closing in, and the race is intense," an LG official said. "The presence of Korean companies on leaderboards and key benchmarks shows the country is not only catching up but is firmly in the game." At the same time, the rollout of GPT-5 shows that real-world user experiences are just as important as strong performances in advanced benchmark tests. Launched on August 7, the highly anticipated OpenAI model shot to the top in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, but has faced backlash from users who claim it feels "downgraded," citing a blander personality and surprisingly basic mistakes. Lee Kyoung-jun, a big data analytics professor at Kyung Hee University, stressed that the true measure of an LLM's competitiveness lies in its practical utility. "Korean LLMs are making strides in benchmarks, but it's important to note that even major models like Exaone are having little impact on the general public for now," Lee said. "Efforts must continue to ensure these excellent models are adopted in real use cases and achieve widespread adoption." herim@
