Korean webtoons are a subgenre of manhwa that are published exclusively online as Webcomics, usually on comic hosting sites such as Naver and Daum. Unlike Western webcomics, this gives them a totally different funding dynamic, as, although they do not have publishers, as such, they are funded through the hosts. Every click still counts, even if the model isn't that of a personally owned project or business variety.
Their layout is different from standard manhwa - instead of individual pages, webtoons are posted as one long, scrolling page per chapter/ strip, with most being entirely in color. Because they are not bound by publisher requirements as much as their print counterparts, webtoons also tend to be a little more avant garde, with either less conventional story lines or dealing with subjects that aren't usually addressed in mainstream entertainment. Expect much in the way of Genre-Busting and Deconstruction within the medium as standard.
Although the readership of these webtoons were once restricted to the Korean speaking population, the popularity of series such as Trace, Noblesse and Tower of God has recently generated a solid western fanbase for the medium, to the point that multiple websites have started publishing licensed English translations of various series and offering English-language apps available for Kindle, Android and iOS. The popularity of this format also resulted in other international comics artists beginning to use the Webtoon format and in the West making a Webtoon-like hosting site of their own, Tapas Media.
Website publishers of English-translated Webtoons: CIAYO Comics (Indonesia)note , Lezhin, MANGA.CLUB (Japan & China), MangaToon (China), MangaNelo (China) Naver LINE Webtoons, Netcomics, Spottoon, Tapas Media, TappyToon, Manta, Toomics, TopToon, WebComics App (China), WeComics (China)
Examples — Note that ALL of these belong in the Webcomic namespace if they were Web First.
- Daily JoJo
- Damn Reincarnation
- Dark Heaven
- Days Of Hana
- Dead Days
- Dear Nemesis
- Denma the Quanx
- Disciple of the Holy Sword
- The Divorcees Dessert Cafe
- The Devil King Is Bored
- DICE: The Cube That Changes Everything
- Distant Sky
- Divine Bells
- Doctor Elise
- Dokgo
- Dogfight
- Doom Breaker
- Dororo Re:Verse
- Dreaming Freedom
- Dr. Frost
- Dungeons And Artifacts
- Dungeon Reset
- Duty After School
- I Became the Wife of the Male Lead
- I Became The Male Leads Stepmother
- I Belong To House Castiello
- I Don't Want This Kind of Hero
- If Ai Ruled The World
- I Log In Alone
- I Love Amy
- I'm All Out of Health!
- I'm The Tyrant's Secretary
- I'm the Queen in This Life
- Infinite Leveling Murim
- In Full Bloom
- I Raised The Beast Well
- I Shall Kill That Sweet Devil
- I Shall Master This Family
- It Was All You
- I Will Become the Villain's Poison Taster
- Magical 12th Graders
- Magician
- The Maid And The Vampire
- The Makeup Remover
- The Male Leads Adopted Daughter
- Manager Kim
- Marine Blues
- Marry My Husband
- The Matchmaking Baby Princess
- Melo Holic
- Miss Guillotine
- Mom, I'm Sorry
- Moonlight Garden
- The Monstrous Duke's Adopted Daughter
- My Daughter Is A Zombie
- My Fiancée Is a Vampire Hunter!
- My Gently Raised Beast
- My Heart Is Beating
- My In-Laws are Obsessed with Me
- My Life as an Internet Novel
- My Secret Brother
- My Young Cat My Old Dog
- SAVE ME
- Save It For The Honeymoon
- Seasons Of Blossom
- The Second Coming Of Gluttony
- Second Life Ranker
- See You in My 19th Life
- Semantic Error
- Separate Ways
- Sexercise
- Shaman
- Shadow Queen
- Shin Angyo Onshi
- Shutline
- Sidekicks
- A Simple Thinking About Blood Type
- Skill Master Levels Up
- Space
- Solo Farming in the Tower
- Solo Leveling
- The Soulless Duchess
- The Sound Of Your Heart
- Stalker
- A Stepmother's Marchen
- Study Group
- Suicide Boy
- Sunjeong
- Supernatural Investigation Department
- Survival Storyofa Sword King In A Fantasy World
- Survive as the Hero's Wife
- Surviving Romance
- Surviving the Game as a Barbarian
- TAL
- Tale of Eun Aran
- Tales of Greed
- Teenage Mercenary
- Telling Through Colors
- That Summer
- There Must Be Happy Endings
- They Say I Was Born a King's Daughter
- Ties Of Compassion
- Til Debt Do Us Part
- The Time Of The Terminally Ill Extra
- Thesis
- The Three Times
- To Love Your Enemy
- To Not Die
- Tomorrow
- Tower of God
- Trace (Nasty Cat)
- Transfer Student Stormbringer
- Trapped
- Trapped in a Cursed Game as an NPC
- Trapped In A Webnovel As A Good For Nothing
- True Beauty
- Twelve Nights
- The Tyrant's Only Perfumer
- Wait Wolf
- Wake Up Deadman
- Warehouse
- The Warrior Returns
- The Way to Protect the Female Lead's Older Brother
- Weak Hero
- Welcome to Room #305
- Welcome to the Convenience Store
- Wet Sand
- Whale Star: The Gyeongseong Mermaid
- What Does the Fox Say
- When I Woke Up I Became A Bagel Girl
- White Angels Have No Wings
- White Angels Get No Rest
- Who Are You
- Who Made Me a Princess
- White Epic
- Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion
- Wish You Were Gone
- Wolfs Castle
Korean Webtoons in fiction:
Film
- Killer Toon is about a webtoon artist who becomes a murder suspect after the grisly deaths she depicts in her horror webtoons start coming true in Real Life.
Live-Action TV
- In the Korean Drama Mimi, the protagonist Han Min-woo is a webtoon artist, and becomes inspired by his dreams to draw a story about Mimi. (In the original film that the drama was based off, however, he was a novelist.)
- Another Korean drama, the premise of "W" is that there's a surgeon whose webtoon author father went missing. She later gets pulled into the world of said webtoon.