At ThinkPub 2026, held during the Brussels Book Fair on 27 March 2026, Sébastien Célimon offers a critical assessment of webtoons, their audiences and Europe’s position within the sector. Drawing on almost twenty years of experience with digital comics, he argues that European institutions and publishers have failed to provide sufficient support, infrastructure and professional opportunities for local webtoon creators.
Célimon defines the webtoon as a digitally native form of Korean comics designed for vertical reading on smartphones. Unlike conventional publishing, major platforms such as Naver Webtoon and Kakao operate through a continuous flow of serialised entertainment. Their objective is less to cultivate a readership around individual works than to maintain an audience through frequent episodes, familiar genres, performance data and calibrated products capable of retaining attention.
Romance and Boys’ Love attract predominantly female audiences, while action narratives related to the Japanese shōnen tradition appeal strongly to young men. These categories can reproduce familiar formulas, yet fiction can still create space for discussions of sexuality, consent, power and social relationships. Célimon estimates that around 70% of Korean webtoons are adapted from previously successful web novels, creating a tested pipeline from prose to webtoon and potentially to animation, television, film, theatre and merchandise.
Célimon describes webtoon as complementary to printed comics rather than their replacement, but warns that Europe cannot remain passive while Korean and Japanese platforms expand internationally. European publishers and cultural institutions should support creators, develop competitive platforms, establish fairer professional frameworks and treat webtoon as both an economic product and a cultural form. Without coordinated action, European authors may participate mainly as contractors within commercial systems designed elsewhere.
Original French title: Focus sur le webtoon
