Suji Kim made history in 2024 when “Under the Oak Tree” hit #7 on the New York Times Best Seller list for Hardcover Fiction — the first web novel originally written in Korean to land there. Now her follow-up, “The Forgotten Meadows,” is getting the webtoon treatment, with Kakao Entertainment confirming on April 29 that the adaptation launched May 5 on Kakao Page and Kakao Webtoon.
The numbers explain why Kakao moved fast. As a web novel, “The Forgotten Meadows” topped Kakao Page’s new-release rankings in both readership and purchases and has already surpassed 20 million cumulative views — a hit by any measure, and an even bigger one for a story releasing in the shadow of an author whose last book made American bestseller history.
The new story leans directly on that built-in fanbase: it shares a universe with “Under the Oak Tree,” though it follows a different pair of leads. “The Forgotten Meadows” centers on imperial princess Thalia Roem Gurtah, born of an affair and carrying everything that complicates a royal bloodline, and her entanglement with eastern nobleman Varkas Raedgo Siorkan. It’s the same register that made Kim’s earlier work travel so well — romantasy with real emotional weight, not just palace intrigue for its own sake.
Illustration duties go to Spoon, the artist behind the visually acclaimed “Who Made Me a Princess,” a pairing that signals Kakao is treating this less like a routine adaptation and more like a flagship release. Spoon’s detail-heavy, expression-driven style is built for exactly the kind of emotional arcs Kim writes, and the vertical-scroll webtoon format gives the romance room to breathe panel by panel in a way text alone can’t.
One catch for readers outside Korea: there’s no official English version of “The Forgotten Meadows” web novel yet. “Under the Oak Tree,” by contrast, is already fully available in English — Manta publishes the novel and its webtoon adaptation digitally, Inklore handles print, and Manta also carries the English webtoon for Kim’s other book, “There’s a Mouse in My House.” If “The Forgotten Meadows” follows the same path, an English release is less a question of “if” than “when.”
Sources: Anime News Network, “Kakao Entertainment to Launch Webtoon Adaptation of Suji Kim’s The Forgotten Meadows Web Novel,” May 2, 2026; Kakao Comics Beat, “UNDER THE OAK TREE makes history as first Korean novel on NYT Best Sellers List,” November 21, 2024.
