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Consolidating Korea’s story platforms under KakaoPage
Kakao Entertainment is merging Kakao Webtoon into KakaoPage, folding its domestic storytelling business into a single platform. On September 22, the company said it would bring its scattered content and users together under KakaoPage to strengthen its intellectual property (IP) lineup. Detailed guidelines for users go out on September 29, with the full merger set to finish by the end of the year.
Once merged, the expanded KakaoPage will hold around 16,000 original story IPs across webtoons and web novels, which Kakao Entertainment says is the largest library in Korea. The main goal is pulling the data that had been split between the two platforms, reading histories, subscriptions, and the works themselves, into one place. That combined data should make recommendations better and help readers find a wider range of stories.
Bringing different strengths under one roof
KakaoPage and Kakao Webtoon are part of the same company, but they grew in different directions. KakaoPage built its user base for web novels and webtoons around the “Wait or Pay” model, which gives readers free episodes if they wait. It grew into a broader content platform that also offers standard comics, books, and “novel comics,” where popular web novels get adapted into webtoon form.
Kakao Webtoon’s strength was its creator network, carried over from Daum Webtoon, and its track record planning and producing original titles. It also played a role in turning those stories into dramas and films. This merger is meant to combine one platform’s monetization and distribution setup with the other’s production strength, all inside KakaoPage. Readers won’t have to switch between two apps anymore, but it’s worth watching the coming guidelines to see how existing purchases and reading libraries carry over.
What Tapas closing says about the global strategy
Alongside the domestic merger, the North American webtoon platform Tapas is shutting down. Kakao Entertainment bought Tapas in 2021 and has used it as its main foothold in the North American story market, so the shutdown will directly affect readers and creators there. The company still needs to spell out the closing timeline and how access to current series will be handled or moved elsewhere.
Kakao Entertainment’s global story business will lean more on its partnership with Kakao Piccoma going forward: content and user data concentrate in KakaoPage at home, while Kakao Piccoma’s operations abroad carry the company’s IP catalog overseas. The shift points to something bigger happening across the industry. Webtoon companies that spent years expanding by running multiple platforms at once are now trimming down to focus on core services and actually making money.
Source: Aju Business Daily, Seoul Economic Daily, September 22, 2026.
